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Latin American Art
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The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art
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![Meridianos [Meridians]](http://www.mfah.org/images/art/art1934.jpg)
Cícero Dias, Meridianos [Meridians], 1953 , 2005.994
The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, gift of the Caroline Wiess Law Foundation
© Cícero Dias
Photo: Rômulo Fialdini
The collection, which consists of the finest examples of geometric abstraction in paintings, constructions, drawings, posters, and graphic materials by Brazil´s foremost artists of the post-World War II era, has long been regarded as a brilliant window into the seminal decades of Brazil´s modernization.
"In building his collection, Adolpho Leirner created a new standard of collecting," said Peter C. Marzio, director of the MFAH. "The collection´s strength and international impact derives from its highly focused and disciplined accretion of works, from the earliest examples of geometric abstraction to the later avant-garde work originating in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. As such, the collection is unsurpassed. The addition of this inspiring collection to the MFAH will invigorate the ongoing investigation of the contributions of Latin American artists to the art of our time. It represents a key chapter in the global story of Modernism."
"In the 1950s and 1960s, the contributions of artists from the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro axis opened up a highly original chapter in the history of international Modernism that has only now been fully been recognized outside Brazil," said Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and the director of the MFAH International Center for the Arts of the Americas. The Leirner Collection offers a rare opportunity to understand certain critical developments in Brazilian art which are also relevant to the history of avant-garde art in Latin America and elsewhere."
Purchase of the collection was made possible by funds from the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund and a gift from the Caroline Wiess Law Foundation.
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