Colin Gleadell explains the connection between the Tate and the growing popularity of Brazilian artists at ArtBasel Miami Beach:
Catherine Petitgas, a London- based collector on Tate’s Latin American art acquisition committee, believes the new wave of interest is based on a reassessment of geometrical abstraction in the 1950s when Brazilian artists such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica created a distinctive artistic language as part of the Neo-Concrete Group.
As a result, public institutions have been collecting, inspiring private collectors to collect, too. In New York, MoMA has been displaying works by Clark and Oiticica for the first time, and is planning a major exhibition about the influence of Clark in 2013. In Paris, the Pompidou Centre has recently formed a Latin American art acquisition committee, and in the past few years, Tate has hosted memorable exhibitions for the Mexican, Gabriel Orozco, and for the Brazilians, Oiticica and Cildo Meireles. Tate’s list of recent gifts, loans and acquisitions includes not only works by the Neo-Concrete artists, Clark, Oiticica and Mira Schendel, but also the next generation of Brazilians – Meiriles, Ernesto Neto, Adriana Varejão, Vik Muniz and Ana Mendieta. And of the latest generation, 25 per cent of artists born since 1985 in Tate’s collection are Latin American.
Art Basel When Brazil Moved to Miami (Telegraph)
