Pinta New York Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary

PINTA - The Modern & Contemporary LatinAmerican Art Show, on view Thursday through Sunday at 7th W 34th. Street, will celebrate its fifth edition with the participation of over 50 galleries from the U.S., Latin America and Europe. This unique fair --the only local gathering of Latin American art galleries-- will feature some of the best modern art from South of the border, including great masters such as Fernando Botero, Rufino Tamayo, Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta, as well of works ranging from geometric abstraction, concrete and conceptual art from the 1970s and 80s to the most cutting-edge contemporary production. (To see catalogue, click here)

Since the fair's first edition, U.S. galleries have held the largest representation. On this occasion, PINTA will host seventeen galleries from New York, Miami, San Antonio and other American cities. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Spain will also have a significant presence. 

This year's guest artist will be Antonio Manuel (born 1947), one of the most important Brazilian artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Manuel's work, characterized by a markedly political message, is already on view at a satellite exhibition at Americas Society --"Antonio Manuel: I Want to Act, Not Represent!"-- curated by Claudia Calirman and Gabriela Rangel.


Brazil's vibrant contemporary art scene will further represented by six galleries from Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte and by individual works within projects curated by Italian art critic Jacopo Crivelli Visconti. Crivelli, a former curator of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and of the Volta Contemporary Art Fair at Basel, Switzerland, will present works by Claudio Perna (Venezuela), Eder Santos (Brazil), Faivovich and Goldberg (Argentina), Fernanda Gomes (Brazil), Iván Candeo (Venezuela), Jonathan Hernández (Mexico), Lygia Pape (Brazil), Patricio Larrambebere (Argentina) and Rómulo Aguerre (Uruguay). 

Lygia Pape, Divisor(1968). Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 80s 

© Projeto Lygia Pape.Courtesy Galeria Graça Brandão

PINTA 2011 will continue to offer what has become one of its "trademark": the Museum  Acquisitions Program. This program has already invested more than USD $800,000 in different institutions; half of that sum was provided by PINTA as a matching fund.  More than fifty works of art have been purchased in this way since 2007 and are now part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art  (MoMA), the Museums of Fine Arts of Houston, Boston, and Philadelphia, and El Museo del Barrio, among others. This year's guest institutions are the Bronx Museum of Art, the Newark Museum of New Jersey, and the Museums of Fine Arts of Boston and of Houston.

"This is a project that keeps growing," says PINTA's chairman Alejandro Zaia. “We will continue to contribute to the strengthening and increased exposure of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese art in two of the greatest cultural capitals of the world: New York and London.”

Pinta - The Modern & Contemporary Latin American Art Show. On view at 7 West 34th Street (at Fifth Avenue), New York. VIP Opening: November 10th (6:00pm - 9:00pm; by invitation only) Open to the general public from Friday, November 11th (2:00pm - 8:00pm), Saturday, November 12th (12:00pm - 8:00pm), and Sunday (November 13th 12:00pm - 7:00pm). For more information, visit www.pintaart.com.