Louisiane Saint Fleurant (n. Petit-Trou-de-Nippes, Haiti 1924~f.2005). Sans titre (Portrait de femme avec les filles). Sin ficha; (Sin tituto (Retrato de muter condos muchachas)); Oleo sobre liens; 76.2 x 101.6 cm; Collection El Museo del Barrio, Nueva York; Donacion de Sanford Rubenstein, 2007.25.6. Image courtesy El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio announces Popular Painters and Other Visionaries, the museum’s first online exhibition that examines the work of 30 artists from the Americas and the Caribbean. Curated by El Museo’s Chief Curator, Rodrigo Moura, and originally planned as an in-person experience, the exhibition was adapted as a virtual presentation that will be on view from August 6 to November 8, 2020.
Felipe Jesus Consalvos (n. La Habana, Cuba 1891 ~ f. ca. 1960) Chant of the Jungle, c. 1920-1950 (Canto de la jungle) Collage de Tecnica mixtape; 106 x 71.1 cm; Cortesia de Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York y Doodletown Farm, LLC. Image courtesy of El Museo del Barrio
Popular visual sources provide the narrative thread of the exhibition, which is divided into thematic sections around labor and daily life; festivities; black Atlantic religion; vernacular architecture; and bodily representation. In addition to these themes, four artists are presented in monographic sections: Andrés Curruchich, José Bernardo Cardoso Jr., Felipe Jesus Consalvos, and Martín Ramírez. Diasporic experiences are shared by the artists featured in the show – whether as African populations in the New World, Latin American and Caribbean people in the United States, or in reference to the displacement of Amerindian populations within their own territories. This is reflected in the impact of migration, exclusion, marginalization, cultural resistance, indigeneity, self-determination, and autobiography that is present in their works.
Horace Pippin (n. 1888 West Chester, Pensilvania ~ f. 1946 West Chester, Pensilvania) Domino Players, 1943 (Jugadores de domino) Oleo sobre tablero rechazado; 32.4 x 55.9 cm; The Philips Collection, Washington, D.C. Adquirido en 1943. Cualquier reproducción de esta imagen digitalizada no se realizara sin el consentimiento por escrito de The Philips Collection, Washington, D.C. Image courtesy El Museo del Barrio
“Most of these artists and their aesthetic languages have been described in the past as naïve or primitive, labels that this project rejects as pejorative and reductive in that they implicate racial and social bias and prejudice. This show reflects El Museo’s continued commitment to redefine art beyond Eurocentric limitations,” says Rodrigo Moura.
Originally planned as a Permanent Collection show, canceled after the COVID-19 outbreak, the online exhibition expands its initial scope to include loans from private and institutional collections, including U.S. and international Museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, and Tate Modern.
“Through this exhibition we are amplifying artists that have operated outside of the canon. Through our team’s research into the Permanent Collection, it was wonderful to find a number of works by artists from Brazil, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the diaspora, who not only offered strong representations of works on the margins of modernism and the mainstream art, but also those that challenged and further expanded the canon,” added Moura.
Artists featured in this exhibition include Agostinho Batista de Freitas; Rigaud Benoît; Eloy Blanco; Rafael Borjes de Oliveira José Bernardo Cardoso Jr.; Pedro Cervántez; Jacques-Richard Chéry; Felipe Jesús Consalvos; Félix Cordero; Andrés Curruchich; Préfète Duffaut; Asilia Guillén; Manuel Hernández Acevedo; Silvia de Leon Chalreo; Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato; Gregorio Marzán; Djanira da Motta e Silva; Sénèque Obin; Horace Pippin; Heitor dos Prazeres; Martín Ramírez; Jesús “Chucho” Reyes Ferreira; Louisiane Saint Fleurant; Chico da Silva; José Antônio da Silva; Maria Auxiliadora da Silva; Micius Stéphane; Chico Tabibuia; Pierre Joseph Valcin; Pedro Villarini; and Alfredo Volpi.
