LINE-PLANE-VOLUME/SCULPTURE: 1944-2006   This exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture shows the infinite reach of this art form. Artists attuned to the intrinsic nature of each material, whether wood, sheet metal and wire, cement, clay, or acrylic created a new formal and eclectic vocabulary. In several sculptures a dialogue with painting is evident, as those artists are/were also painters. Monumento, a 1944 wood assemblage by Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay 1874-1949) is the earliest work presented. In his search for a timeless expression, Torres-García emulated the first human assertive material gesture: to erect a menhir. Torres-Garcia intended to erect large-scale landmarks like Monumento throughout Uruguay, "to familiarize people with geometry, and through geometry with universal art." Monumento, ca.1944 Incised Lapacho wood, 53 x 39 1/4 x 2 in., 135 x 100 x 5 cm   "Universalismo Constructivo" page 300 Illustrated in his 1944 tome "Universalismo Constructivo,"Monumento, made of Lapacho, a South American hardwood, holds the summation of Torres-García's ideas. The irregular rectangular parts are joined as if stone blocks, reminiscent of Andean wall construction. The carved inscriptions: "Forma,""Abstracto,""Concreto,"and the triangle and the pictographic image of a sun condense his basic beliefs in art. Francisco Matto (Uruguay 1911-1995) was a painter who shared Torres-García's interest in Amerindian cultures. In 1932, he traveled to Southern Argentina and Chile where he encountered the art of the Araucano and Mapuche Indians. The wood funerary posts in Mapuche cemeteries made him aware of the religious and ritualistic functions in tribal art. In his studio surrounded by his extensive collection of tribal art, Matto sought to infuse his own work with the magic he found in their art – it became his lifelong quest. Dos Venus, 1976 Painted wood, 43 3/4 x 23 5/8 in., 111 x 60 cm   The Two Venuses of 1976 hark back to the earliest and most basic representations of the female goddess. Delicately painted, Matto's characteristic light brushstrokes skim the unfinished wood surface. These Venus are thoroughly modern and yet timeless; as the writer Robert C. Morgan so well described: "Like some African carvings, Matto understood the essential, the symbolic, and the emotional infrastructure that informed the space, the elegant maneuvering of space in relation to planar form. The subtle application of color in these works is as poignant as in many of the sculptures of David Smith." Horacio Torres' (Italy 1924-New York 1976) nudes are in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts among others, but the wood, wire and fake fur sculpture in this exhibition is an experiment in conceptual art, far from the painting medium where he excelled. Untitled, ca. 1965 and detail Painted wood, 46 3/4 x 4 3/4 x 4⅞ in., 119 x 12 x 12,5 cm. Puzzled by the total faith that tribal societies have in the power of fetishes, the series of artefacts Torres made in the late 1960s were an exploration of the animistic qualities of objects. The totem- box like work has a narrow and dark opening into a cavity that is lined with unseen dark fur and from where a loose electrical wire can be glimpsed. Torres' modern fetishes were plugged into a live outlet and the viewer, invited to insert a hand, ran a real risk of being shocked. Trepidatious as with approaching ancient Rome's Boca de la veritá and concentrating on the wire, the hands unexpected contact with the unidentified fur is jerked away. José Gurvich (Lithuania 1927-New York 1974) was another extraordinary painter who studied with Torres-García in his Montevideo workshop. As early as 1950 he worked with clay and he continued to do so finding ceramic studios in Rome, Israel, Montevideo and New York. Untitled Figure, ca.1972 Ceramic, 9 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 2 3/8 in., 24 x 14 x 6 cm For Gurvich it was an ideal medium, for in its ductile quality he found immediacy for his expression. Out of a rolled piece of clay, his agile hands created fantastical shapes like the schematized figure on exhibit. Made in New York in the early 1970s, it combines delicate coils in intricate designs. Gurvich's skill as a miniaturist, translated the delicacy of his paintings and drawings into clay. Gonzalo Fonseca (Uruguay 1922-Italy 1997) another member of the Taller Torres-García in Montevideo, was a brilliant painter, draftsman, and sculptor who worked with wood, cement, stone, clay, and marble. He completed important large public sculpture commissions in Reston Virginia, Mexico City, Tokyo, and New York. Cabezas, 1968 Painted wood & metal, 57 5/8 x 30 x 9 in., 146 x 77 x 23 cm   Heads, 1968, is made of construction-wood planks that the artist found on the streets of New York, where he had settled a decade earlier. Nestled within the two boxes are two busts. Concealed behind one face-shaped hinged cover is a carved head choked by a ball stuffed in its mouth, and in the other, a playful reference to sex. This animistic composition confronts and surprises the viewer with an unexpected turn. Painted in chalk like white, earth red, and cobalt blue, within the context of Fonseca's output, Heads is an unusual piece. Lidya Buzio's (Uruguay 1949) sculptural ceramics combine sculptural form and painting through her unique vision and talent. Formed of thin slabs of red clay through a careful process, the shape is dried, sanded, and painted with colours the artist mixes. As with the 2003 volumetric Cityscape II, the sculptures are then burnished and fired, and through the process the colour fuses with the clay resulting in a smooth, refined and rich surface. Cityscape II, 2003 Painted, burnished earthenware 12 1/4 x 9 x 10 in. 31 x 22,5 x 26 cm. For Robert C. Morgan, writing in American Ceramics, Buzio is "intent on giving the illusion of bulging, bending prostheses that go over and through convex and concave surfaces into some strange, enigmatic architecture.""The rhythms are most astounding. To see convincing replicas of archetypical buildings from a New York cityscape fully absorbed into the surface of a vessel where the eye forces the mind to move back and forth relentlessly between two and three dimensions is an inexorable experience."Buzio's sculptural ceramics are in the collections of important American and international museums worldwide. When Julio Alpuy (Uruguay, 1919) settled in New York in 1961, he was conflicted by his earlier work. Painting, he said, kept pulling him back to what he had already done. His solution was to change the medium; it was then that he concentrated on working with wood. Alpuy, like Louise Nevelson, found in their downtown Manhattan neighbourhood ample discarded wood to make sculptures and like her, he hoarded it. Los Arquetipos, 1989 Incised & carved wood, 16 1/8; x 36 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. 37 x 95,5 x 7,3 cm Formed from a chunk of wood beam, the 1989 sculpture Los Arquetipos (Archetypes), relates as the name suggests to a first form - an embryonic state: created by carved shapes like a female torso and tender plants. At top there is a bird-like carving, emerging from a nesting grove into its first flight, a flower bud, and a vessel-like shape. Alpuy's love for the organic and the primal, for the source of life, are presented in this piece in a balanced play of volumes. Concave and convex, the wood has been caressed into delicate lines, pierced, and carved to simulate deep crevasses that burrow into the depth of the earth from where all life emerges When in 1991, César Paternosto (Argentina 1931) was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation's Artist-in-Residency at the Lago di Como-Bellagio Study Center, he worked on a group of wood models for sculptures. Two years later he made his first sculptures of pigmented cement. "At this point," Paternosto wrote, "I decided that casting cement, a technique that I had learned long ago, was more feasible than carving stones." Impossible Seat, 1993 Pigmented cement, 23 x 9 1/2 x 6 in., 58,5 x 24 x 15,2 cm Paternosto relates these sculptures (evident in the elegant vertical open accents in Impossible Seat, 1993) to a previous series of canvases titled Porticos. These door and window-like openings refer to the Andean or Greek "sun gates" and to the symbolic architecture of antiquity - where "the openings were metaphors for the transition from sacred to profane space." Carlos Bevilacqua (Brazil 1965) studied architecture in Rio de Janeiro and in 1991-93, drawing and sculpture in New York at the New York Studio School. His whimsical work arrived from Rio in parts: lengths of wire, wire springs, glass beads, wood rods and spheres that we assembled - following his instructions. . It was an enlightening process through which one learned to appreciate how the various elements of the piece relate and connect to each other in a harmonious whole, either by fitting or by the tension of the springs. Wall sculpture, 2006 Wood, wire, glass 18 x 26 x 13 in. 46 x 66 x 34 cm. Ladd Spiegel (United States 1952) Double Cube, 2006 has a tight cluster of pegs inserted on a square outline on a square base, Malevich's archetypal Suprematist icon, is repeated in space. This piece represents two cubes, one defined by the white-painted portions of the extended elements, and the other by the unpainted parts. The eye is challenged to create the cubic shapes from the chaotic forms. Double Cube, 2006 Painted wood, 15 x 15 x 10 in., 38 x 38 x 25,4 cm As Jennifer Liese wrote "Spiegel's wood squares bring the Agnes Martinesque grid -customarily reserved for distanced contemplation of the sublime- right down to earth. Studded with hand-whittled pegs, the work invites us, if only by suggestion, to touch the sacred symbol and partake in our own meditation." The hand-carving of the 81 pegs is a Zen-like process for the artist, because the repetitive action creates a meditative state. Alicia Penalba (Argentina 1918-France 1982) moved to Paris when in 1948 she was awarded a scholarship by the French Government. She studied with Ossip Zadkine at La Grand Chaumière academy, and in 1955 showed her work at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, her first solo exhibition was in Paris at the Galerie du Dragon. She was awarded the International Prize for Sculpture at the São Paulo Bienale in 1961. Her sculptures range from the monumental, as “La Grande Double”1972, a massive bronze at the Mortgage Guarantee Insurance Company Plaza in Milwaukee to gold jewelry. Composition [Edition of 16] Cast Aluminum, 5 x 21 3/8 x 11 7/8 in., 12,5 x 54,3 x 30 cm Composition, of polished pewter, consists of container like elements suggestive of exotic, petrified, sea life forms, arranged in an asymmetrical, organic manner. Penalba was "moved by a need to spiritualize the symbols of eroticism which is the source of all creation and the purest and most sacred state in the life of a man." Composition, signed on the underside and with stamped initials and the number 21, was previously in the collection of the Rothschild family. One of the most distinguished Argentine abstract sculptors, Ennio Iommi (Argentina, 1926), was a co-founder of Arte Concreto Invención in Buenos Aires, that was to become one of the most innovative avant-garde movements of the Rio de la Plata in the 1940s. Among many other projects, his large sculpture for Le Corbusier's Casa Curuchet in Buenos Aires is renowned. Iommi's Untitled 1949, in our exhibition, is an important example of a series of airy compositions the sculptor began in 1946 entitled Interrupted Continuity Untitled, 1949 Painted steel, stone base, 48 x 22 x 17 in., 122 x 56 x 43 cm León Ferrari (Argentina, 1920) proposes a "written visual art" which substitutes image and figuration for a text description of his work. A notable example is his Cuadro Escrito [Written Painting] , 1964, as described by the artist; it is "a totally literary piece.” Ferrari maintains that the relevance of the rectangular shape of the sheet of paper, is often overlooked, "Every single page man has written is homage to the rectangle." The rectangular drawing on a sheet of paper, he adds, can also be repeated in the air, and "when projected into space becomes a prism whose faces and edges are the anonymous frame, repeated, impersonal, transparent, envelope within which a line simply has to find its place." Untitled [multiple sculpture No 2/20] Stainless steel, 20 x 6 x 5 3/4 in., 50,7 x 15,3 x 14,7 cm. The Untitled small stainless steel piece, dated 1978, is made of thin vertical rods attached to a metal grid at the base. It is a precursor of the large "artifacts for drawing sounds," which Ferrari showed in 1980 in Sâo Paulo. Made of metal rods these sculptures can be 'played' as musical instruments. The motion of the wires, when either stirred by the wind or by the human hand, in their wave-like infinite configurations, inspired a series of 1979 drawings that depict the wires frozen in different movements, Ferrari titled them Vocabularies. Ferrari's "January 5, 2006," is a hanging piece composed of thin wood rods attached by wire. Viewed from different angles, the triangles superimposing on each other create an intricate interplay of lines. It is an elegant drawing projected in space. Untitled - 5 January 2006 Wood and wire, 55 x 31 1/2 x 25 3/8 in., 140 x 80 x 65 cm. The triangles in Ferrari's piece resonate with the triangular planes in Lygia Clark’s (Brazil 1920-1988) Bicho [Critter], 1960. Clark was one of the outstanding artists of the Brazilian Neo-Concreto group. As the title implies, Clark conceived her hinged sculpture of geometric planes in metal as a living organism, she wrote how the hinges that connect the planes "made me think of a dorsal spine." Bicho Aluminum, 9 x 10 1/2 x 11 in., 23 x 27 x 28,5 cm. She emphasized their organic quality by enabling the viewer to manipulate the Bichos into different shapes. When asked into how many positions the Bicho can change, she replied: "I have no idea, nor do you, but the Bicho knows," as if it had an independent life of its own. The Bicho in our exhibition was shown in Lygia Clark's first New York exhibition at the Louis Alexander Gallery in 1963. Marta Chilindron's (Argentina 1951) sculptures made of transparent acrylic, sometimes tinted, frequently more visible through shadow than matter, are of such lightness that one begins to ponder - the object's very existence. Flower Acrylic, 28 x 31 x 24 in., 71 x 79 x 61 cm Wall Cube, 2006 Acrylic, 15 1/4 x 31 x 11 1/2 in., 39 x 78 x 29 cm. Her folding sculptures invite the active participation of the spectator - to exist as such - they collapse, making the physical perception of space a factor subordinated to their conceptual discernment, to process, and somehow to enchantment. Constantly folding and unfolding, always in the process of existing and disappearing, Chilindron's translucent sculptures approach the ephemeral.