Mariola V. Alvarez is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. She is the author of, The Affinity of Neoconcretism: Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Brazilian Modernism, 1954-1964, published by The University of California Press in 2023. She received her doctorate from the University of California, San Diego, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Humanities Research Center at Rice University. She is the co-editor of New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America (Routledge, 2019) and writes about postwar Brazilian art.
Join us for a book launch celebrating Mariola V. Alvarez’s The Affinity of Neoconcretism: Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Brazilian Modernism, 1954–1964 (March 2023) and Adele Nelson’s Forming Abstraction: Art and Institutions in Postwar Brazil (February 2022). This event features introductions by Studies on Latin American Art series editor Alexander Alberro followed by a conversation with the authors, moderated by professor of art history at Southern Methodist University, Roberto Conduru.
Forming Abstraction highlights the importance of exhibitionary and pedagogical institutions in the development of abstract art in Brazil. Nelson focuses on the formation of the São Paulo Biennial in 1951; the early activities of artists Geraldo de Barros, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, and Ivan Serpa; and the ideas of critics like Mário Pedrosa. The Affinity of Neoconcretism focuses on the period directly following the events discussed by Forming Abstraction. Alvarez argues that the Neoconcretists—a group of artists and poets working together in Rio de Janeiro from 1959 to 1961—engendered a period of incredible optimism and economic development in Brazil.
The launch is open to the public and will take place in person at ISLAA, located at 142 Franklin Street in New York City. Attendees are encouraged to register online in advance. The conversation will be held in English, and a recording will be made available online following the event.
The University of California Press published The Affinity of Neoconcretism and Forming Abstraction as part of the series Studies on Latin American Art. Books in the series encompass studies of art history and cultural practices emerging from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the Latin American diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. International and cosmopolitan in scope, the series seeks to address the production, exhibition, and dissemination of art in and between countries and continents. This series is supported by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).
About The Speaker(s)
Mariola V. Alvarez
Adele Nelson
Adele Nelson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Latin American Visual Studies. She is the author of Forming Abstraction: Art and Institutions in Postwar Brazil (2022), recipient of the 2023 Best Book in the Humanities Antonio Candido Prize presented by the Brazil section, Latin American Studies Association. She is co-organizer of the exhibition Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil (Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, 2022), which received The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Grant. Her writing has appeared in international magazines and academic journals, and she has contributed to numerous museum publications, among them Lygia Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field, 1948–1958 (2020), Mário Pedrosa: De la naturaleza afectiva de la forma (2017), and Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium (2016). Her research has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, Fulbright US Scholar Program, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Alexander Alberro
Alexander Alberro is the Virginia Wright Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University where he teaches modern and contemporary European, US, and Latin American art, as well as the history of photography. His writings have been published in a broad range of journals and exhibition catalogues, and translated into numerous languages. He is also the author and editor of numerous books, including Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth Century Latin American Art (2017); Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke (2016); Luis Camnitzer in Conversation with Alexander Alberro (2014); What is Contemporary Art Today? (2012); John Miller: The Ruin of Exchange (2012); Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings (2009); and Art After Conceptual Art (2006). Alberro is presently completing a book-length study, The Shape of Contemporary Art, that focuses on the transformation of the infrastructure of art in the new geography of globalization. He is the founding editor of the University of California Press’s book series Studies on Latin American Art, which commissions publications of art history and cultural practices emerging from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the Latin American diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
About The Moderator(s)
Roberto Conduru
Roberto Conduru is Endowed Distinguished Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University. His publications include Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis (Fowler Museum UCLA, 2017); Architecture Agouda au Bénin et au Togo (MRE, 2016); Pérolas Negras, Primeiros Fios (EdUERJ, 2013); and Arte Afro-Brasileira (C/Arte, 2007). He has written monographic books on Frida Baranek, Willys de Castro, Jorge Guinle, Carlos Leão, Paulo Pasta, and Álvaro Vital Brazil. He has contributed to journals including 3rd Text Africa, Arte & Ensaios, Art in Translation, Ars, Arts, Concinnitas, Critical Interventions, Gávea, Juni Magazin, Modos, Perspective, and Third Text. He has curated exhibitions, including Martinho Patrício: Recorte (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, 2023), Quilombo do Rosário (Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea, 2018), and Incorporation: Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Art (Centrale Electrique, 2011); and co-curated Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis (Fowler Museum UCLA, 2017) and Perles de Liberté – Bijoux Afro-Brésiliens (Grand Hornu Images, 2011).
