Brazilian artist Lygia Pape was a founding member of the Neo-Concrete movement, which was dedicated to the inclusion of art into everyday life.Her early work developed out of an interest in European abstraction; however, she and her contemporaries went be

A founding member of Brazil's Neoconcrete movement, Lygia Pape (1927-2004) pioneered a unique approach to abstraction and valued art that favored the primacy of viewers' sensorial experiences. This catalog, published on the occasion of Lygia Pape's solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York in fall 2018, brings together a variety of works from the artist's rich oeuvre, from sculptures, prints and paintings to installations and films. It focuses particularly on the series Tecelares (1952-59), Ttéias (2003) and Amazoninos (1989-2003). Designed by Damien Saatdjian, the publication includes a 2009 conversation between Pape's daughter Paula Pape, curator Paulo Herkenhoff and poet Ferreira Gullar, as well as a newly commissioned text by art historian Alexander Alberro that explores multisensorial art with a focus on the works surveyed here.

Art produced outside hegemonic centers is often seen as a form of derivation or relegated to a provisional status. Forming Abstraction turns this narrative on its head. In the first book-length study of postwar Brazilian art and culture, Adele Nelson highlights the importance of exhibitionary and pedagogical institutions in the development of abstract art in Brazil. By focusing on the formation of the São Paulo Biennial in 1951; the early activities of artists Geraldo de Barros, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, and Ivan Serpa; and the ideas of critics like Mário Pedrosa, Nelson illuminates the complex, strategic processes of citation and adaption of both local and international forms. The book ultimately demonstrates that Brazilian art institutions and abstract artistic groups—and their exhibitions of abstract art in particular—served as crucial loci for the articulation of societal identities in a newly democratic nation at the onset of the Cold War.

Lygia Pape (1927–2004) was one of the most acclaimed and influential Brazilian artists of the twentieth century. As a prominent member of a generation of artists, architects, and designers who embraced the optimistic and constructive spirit of postwar Brazil, she is particularly known for her participation in the experimental art movement Neoconcretism, which sought to rework the legacy of European avant-garde abstraction to suit a new cultural context. Beyond the specific aims of Neoconcretism, however, Pape engaged with a wide range of media painting, drawing, poetry, graphic design and photography, film and performance—constantly experimenting in a quest to confront the canonical and discover unexplored territories in modern art. Following a coup d’etat in 1964, when the establishment of an authoritarian regime shattered dreams of shared prosperity in Brazil, Pape continued to pursue her art against difficult odds. The streets of Rio de Janeiro became her ultimate source of inspiration, as she created participatory works that questioned the space between artist and viewer and the social context of art itself. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} This beautifully illustrated publication accompanies the first major exhibition in the United States devoted to the work of Lygia Pape. Featuring essays by art historians in both North and South America, as well as two previously untranslated interviews with the artist and an illustrated chronology, Lygia Pape is a testament to the artist’s lasting importance to the modern art and culture of Latin America and to her position as a major figure of the international avant-garde.

Expanded from a touring exhibition originated at Para Site in 2013, this book critically analyzes historical and contemporary imaginations and politics of fear in the face of disease and the specter of contamination in society and culture. Scholars, artists, novelists, and journalists depart from Hong Kong's history of epidemic--the most recent being the SARS outbreak of 2003, shortly followed by the tragic death of pan-Asian pop icon Leslie Cheung, and tackle the galvanizing power and the varied perceptions of contagion in the context of lingering histories, myths, anxieties, and memories across geographies. While composing a complex picture of the Hong Kong psyche, these contributions speak from a humanistic and global perspective, pointing to the intersections of urban environments and post-colonial psychology, popular culture and racism, public health and migration, national identity and art. Copublished with Para Site, Hong Kong Contributors Michael Berry, Natalia S. H. Chan, Cosmin Costinas, Dung Kai-cheung, Inti Guerrero, James T. Hong, Austin Ming-han Hsu, Zuni Icosahedron, Finnouala McHugh, Pak Sheung Chuen, Lawrence Pun, Shih Shu-ching, Xiaoyu Weng

Concrete Invention is focused on the development of geometric abstraction in Latin America (Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Caracas) throughout the decades of the thirties and seventies in the twentieth century. It includes theoretical essays about the movement, personal reflections by contemporary artists, and a visual section featuring specific themes (geometry, illusion, dialogue, vibration, universalism). It ends with a questionnaire given to well-known theorists about the continuity, value and influence of geometric abstraction in the present. Resembling an artist's book, it includes a fold-out piece by artist José León Cerrillo, which forms a play on words with the publication's title.