DIMENSIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVE ART IN BRAZIL
THE ADOLPHO LEIRNER COLLECTION
Mari Carmen Ramírez, Adolpho Leirner
Mari Carmen Ramírez, Adolpho Leirner: DIMENSIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVE ART IN BRAZIL: THE ADOLPHO LEIRNER COLLECTION. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2007. First edition. Square quarto. Printed paper covered boards [as issued]. Olive/red endpapers. 180 pp. 83 full-page color plates. Covers lightly shelfworn with trivial edgewear: a very good or better copy.
10.5 x 11.5 hardcover exhibition catalog with 180 pages illustrated with 83 full-page color plates of Brazilian Constructivist artwork, issued in conjuction with an exhibition of the same name from May 19, 2007 — September 22, 2007. This beautifully illustrated book salutes the recent acquisition by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, of the Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, one of the most important and complete collections in the world devoted to modern Latin American art in the 1950s and 1960s. Including works by Cícero Dias, Samson Flexor, Lygia Clark, and members of the Grupo Ruptura of São Paulo and the Grupo Frente of Rio de Janeiro, Leirner's renowned collection celebrates its artists as important visual architects of Brazilian Modernism.
Although individual objects from the collection have been included in group exhibitions or in individual artists' retrospectives in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, the only complete presentations until now were in Brazil in 1998 and 1999, at São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art and Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art. Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil is organized to reveal the innovation and originality achieved by the various Brazilian Constructive tendencies as well as to illustrate specific traits that separate them from related movements in Europe and the United States. Among the artists represented in the Leirner Collection are Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Milton Dacosta, Cícero Dias, Samson Flexor, Mauricio Nogueira, brothers César and Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel, and Alfredo Volpi.
Forerunners of abstract art in Brazil, including the first artist to embrace geometric abstraction, Cícero Dias (1907-2003) and the influential teacher Samson Flexor (1907-1971) are represented, as are major works by the most cutting-edge and avant-garde artists and groups active in the 1950s: the Grupo ruptura of São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiros Grupo Frente. Artists from these groups include Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973) and Mauricio Nogueira Lima (Grupo ruptura); and the brothers César (1939-) and Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) and Lygia Pape (1929-2004) from Grupo Frente. The collection is also strong in work from the Neo-concrete movement, with six major constructions by Lygia Clark (1920-1988). In addition, the collection features major artists who embraced constructive tenets yet worked independently of these groups, including Alfredo Volpi (1896-1988), Mira Schendel (1919-1988), and Sergio Camargo (1930-1990).
Comprised of nearly 100 art objects, the Adolpho Leirner Collection was formed by the São Paulo-based art patron Adolpho Leirner and acquired by the MAFH between 2005 and 2007. The collection represents a brilliant window into the seminal decades of the 1950s and 1960s when, stimulated by an economic boom and a surge in modernization, Brazil emerged at the vanguard of the region’s social and cultural development. Two paramount events defined the utopian spirit of this time: the establishment of the São Paulo Biennial in 1951, and the inauguration of Brasília, the futuristic new capital, in 1960. Energized by these unprecedented achievements, artists from the São Paulo–Rio de Janeiro axis embraced the legacies of Russian Constructivism, Dutch Neo-Plasticism, and, above all, the School of Design in Ulm, Germany, to create the unique yet highly modulated voice of Brazilian Constructivism.
The son of Polish Jewish immigrants who arrived in Brazil in the 1930s, Adolpho Leirner was born in 1935 in São Paulo. In 1953 he went to England to study textile engineering and design. During his four-year stay, he became acquainted with the legacy of the international Constructivist movements of the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, he developed a passion for architecture and design. Upon his return to Brazil in the late 1950s, Leirner focused his attention on Brazilian decorative arts and contemporary art. In 1961 he bought the first work of what would later constitute his unique collection: the 1958 painting Em vermelho (In Red) by artist Milton Dacosta (1915–88). Naturally drawn to Brazilian Constructivism, Leirner noticed the movement’s disappearance from the public’s attention in the 1960s, as the emergence of figure-based trends such as Pop art flourished. At that point, Leirner decided to concentrate his collecting efforts on Brazilian geometric abstraction. Largely through his direct contact with living artists and influential dealers, he was able to systematically gather exemplary works of these key movements in his country.
As an art collector, Leirner combines both a passion for art as well as a sense of social responsibility. In a well-publicized statement about the meaning and purpose of collecting taken from his superb book, Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection, he describes his motto: “To collect is to nurture a love affair, a passion; it is to uncover findings in a game of search and find, all of which are part of my life.” At the same time, he underscored the ethical responsibility that comes with collecting: “. . .collectors understand they gather their collections not only for private fruition but for the benefit of society, and for this reason they keep and preserve them.”