Latin American Art

A four-artist exhibition at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach starts with a cliche and doesn't do much with it. To its credit, "A Woman's Touch: The Sculptures of Margarita Checa, Isabel de Obaldia, Susana Espinosa and Peschel" refrains from pigeonholing diverse works by confining them to a restrictive category, as was the tendency fairly recently in theme shows.

After decades of waiting in the wings to do an occasional star turn, Latin American art is edging onto center stage at mainstream museums. From New England to Southern California, institutions that pride themselves on geographic diversity but primarily focus on Europe and North America are paying more attention to the art of Central and South America.

Barbara Doyle Duncan, 82, an art historian who was a collector, exhibitor and writer of modern Latin American art, died March 28. A connoisseur of the field at a time when little of it was known to the U.S. art world, Duncan became interested in Latin American art when she lived in Peru. While there from 1947 to 1955, she would meet artists and purchase their work. Duncan was responsible for organizing two important exhibitions at the Americas Society in Manhattan.

Bernard Lewin, a leading collector and dealer of Latin American art, died Jan. 30 at his home in Rancho Mirage. He was 96 and had suffered from heart problems for several months. Together with his late wife, Edith, he amassed a trove of close to 2,000 works, many of them by the best-known names in Mexican Modernist painting. In 1997, the couple donated their holdings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a gift that made LACMA's Latin American collection among the top in the country.

It's either the zeitgeist, or shameless demographic pandering, or some of both. But the 2002-03 arts season is something of a high-water mark for Southland arts organizations offering Latin American and Latino fare.

Never mind the economic crisis, the champagne corks are popping at the opening of the first temporary exhibition at Buenos Aires' new Museum of Latin American Art. Spending $25 million to build a museum to showcase a collection worth double that could be seen as politically incorrect, as Argentina's economy writhes in its fourth year of agonizing recession. But Eduardo Costantini was not to be deterred from his self-appointed mission: putting Latin America back on the art world's map.

When critics say that a painting is formal, we usually mean that its shapes, colors and textures take precedence over its narrative messages and symbolic representations. When we use the same adjective to describe social occasions, entirely different associations come to mind, including images of suits and ties, tuxedos and evening gowns. Guillermo Trujillo's paintings bridge these two worlds.

Highlights from a May 31 New York auction of Latin American art will be on public view today and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Sotheby's galleries, 9665 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Among the attractions are paintings by Frida Kahlo, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Matta and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Information: (310) 274-0340.

The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach becomes an official affiliate Wednesday of the Smithsonian Institution, meaning Southern Californians will soon get a chance to view works of Latin American masters once seen mostly in Washington. These include the art of Uruguay's Joaquin Torres Garcia, Colombia's Fernando Botero, Chile's Roberto Matta, Rufino Tamayo of Mexico and Antonio Segui of Argentina, among others.