“Modern and Metamodern”: an unmissable megaexhibition

The Museum of Modern Art opened its 2024 season with an extraordinary exhibition, “Modern and Metamodern”. In recent years, the process of cataloging and digitizing the documents linked to its historical exhibitions began, making the results available to the public on its website: museomoderno.org

It is a mega exhibition, almost 300 works, of the 11,000 it has, which occupy 4 rooms on the first and second floorwith vast information about the artists who participated, the research carried out and captured in books and audiovisual records.

Modern Heritage (1930-1983) occupy rooms E and F with important works by Josef Albers, a study for “Homage to the Square” (1950), Work 171 (1948) by Raúl Loza, Georges Vantongerloo, an artist of whom there are 7 works, serigraphs by Piet Mondrian “Cosmic Phenomenon” (1962), works by Francis Picabia, Eduardo Serón “Serenamente” (1967), Eugenia Crenovich, known as Yente and her tapestry No. 2 (1957). Other prominent names of the geometric movement and its derivatives, María Martorell, Víctor Magariños, Juan del Prete, Tomás Maldonado, McEntyre, Silva, important sculptures by Iommi, Julián Althabe, among others

The exhibition includes works by Elba Bairon, Ana Gallardo, Ricardo Garabito, Edgardo Giménez, the emblematic quartet of the New Figuration which he exhibited for the first time at the Peuser gallery in 1961: Rómulo Macció, Luis Felipe Noé, Ernesto Deira, Jorge de la Vega, in search of “a new image of man.” Aldo Sessa, Kenneth Kemble Juan Stoppani, Alfredo Prior, Silvia Torrás, Noemí Di Benedetto, Ricardo Garabito, Pablo Suárez, Antonio Berni, Ricardo Carpani and many others who have left their mark on Argentine art.

It’s a important journey both for those involved in the artistic subject, to see again works of leading artists who marked various movements, and for those who today enter the art world of our country. Giving visibility to this very rich heritage, which has also incorporated more than 600 works in the last decade, is an educational and dissemination task that other museums with important works in their collection should imitate.

Important foundational donations such as that of the family of Ignacio Pirovanothe donation of 300 graphic works that he made Antonio Seguí, the Cisneros Collection, and those made by artists and their families, Pompeyo Audivert, León Ferrari and the 72 works on paper, donated by his family, Alberto Heredia whose legacy of 500 works during the direction of Laura Buccellato was received in 2000, Sergio De Loof, and the support of the Acquisitions Committee that managed to incorporate works by David Lamelas , Juan Pablo Renzi, Liliana Maresca, Matías Duville.

They were curators of this relevant exhibition Victoria Northoorn, Director of the Moderno since 2013, and Francisco Lemushead of the curatorial department who recalled that several of the selected works were acquisitions made by the first directors, Rafael Squirru, at whose request we owe the creation of the Museum in 1956, a traveling museum that later had its headquarters in the San Martín Theater whose construction ended in 1960, Hugo Parpagnoli (1963-1971).

The development of the museum under the direction of William Whitelow, for two periods (1971-1974) and (1977-1983). He succeeded him Roberto del Villano (1983-1989) who had the privilege of moving it to its current headquarters on Avenida San Juan, Raul Santana (1991 and 1997) and Laura Buccellato (1997-2013).

On the second floor there is an exhibition “The Golden”controversial work from 1991 by Liliana Maresca (1951-1994) that materializes a critical vision of European colonialism in Latin America. A truncated pyramid that resembles a red ingot – blood spilled by the Indian – on which are placed a round work – the earth, a square work, a throne that alludes to power and a computer that prints data on ancestral deaths and thefts.

In this room you will find “Garimpo”, large work, which alludes to illegal mining extraction, charcoal on paper (2009) by Matías Duville, “Idle”, acrylic on linen (2020) by Washington Cucurto, writer turned painter not long ago, founder from the Eloísa Cartonera publishing house and who paints, glues, makes collage, works with her hands, a tribute to the blackness that can inhabit no matter where; a triptych from the series “Textual Drawings II” (2018) Ana Gallardo artist who currently resides in Mexico, who has given memorable works against violence, patriarchy, marginality, his solidarity with the passage towards old age as well as “Women of the city of Juárez” (2010) pencil on paper.

Completing this group is “Untitled” (2015) plaster, polyeturane, neon, laser printing of Nicanor Aráoza work that carries its usual boldness and the stripped-down photography of Gabriel Valansi.

(San Juan 350. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.). Wednesday, free admission.)