Exhibition @ Americas Society: Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940–1978

Date/Time
Date(s) - Feb 11 2015 until 16 May 2015
12:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Location
Americas Society/Council of the America

February 11 to May 16, 2015

The Visual Arts Gallery will be open Wednesday through Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m

Guest Curators: Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, Ana Elena Mallet, and Jorge F. Rivas Pérez

Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940–1978 examines how design, one of the most innovative chapters in the history of Latin American modernism, transformed the domestic landscape in a period marked by major stylistic developments and social political changes. Sheltered from the overall destruction and disarray of World War II, many Latin American countries (specifically Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela) entered an expansive period of economic growth in the late 1940s through the 1950s, which resulted in the modernization of major cities.

Moderno aims to reposition modern Latin American design within a larger global context to explore how an influx of European and North American architects, designers and entrepreneurs—including a surprisingly large number of women for the time—helped expand the field of design by fostering a cosmopolitan and creative environment. The Bauhaus and other European avant-garde groups were also influential to designers who incorporated these ideologies into innovative designs they produced for their regional publics. In addition, the groundbreaking international design competition “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” organized in 1940 by the Museum of Modern Art, featured a section devoted to Latin American design and played a significant role in the international dissemination of these designers’ works.

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