Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art

Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present: MODERN & CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN ART.  The exhibition runs September 8 – October 21, 2001 with an opening reception September 8, 6-9PM.

Perhaps it is the increasing acceptance of Latin America in American culture that has heightened our appetite for Latin American artwork.  For Angelenos, perhaps it is simply our proximity and dependence upon the Latin American community.  Whatever the cause, the passionate embrace of the vivid colors, cultural politics and clear-eyed mystical imagery of modern masters has opened the door for a thrilling crop of highly skilled contemporary Latin American artists.

By featuring today’s artists alongside Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera and Alfredo Ramos Martinez a vital marriage of past to present and present to future is suggested.  Vladimir Cora’s montage of boldly colored confrontational faces adjoins the tender outstretched arm of his mentor Tamayo’s Figura.  Carlos Venegas creates a seemingly breathing homage to his Indian heritage in elegant stone busts of solemn Aztec warriors. The publicly displayed mural work of Alfredo de Batuc echoes back to the explosion of mural work famously rendered by Diego Rivera.  The steady direct gaze of a newly engaged Mexican couple in Ramos Martinez’s The Betrothal becomes a stirring counterpoint to Ana Mercedes Hoyos’s indirectly observed exuberantly toned female figure in Bazurto. 

Working in a variety of mediums, with an inexhaustible supply of vision, curiosity and determination, these artists celebrate not only their heritage and future, but ours as well.