The Getty Research Institute (GRI) continues to acquire new artworks and archives relating to Latin American art.
For a city like Los Angeles, with such a strong Hispanic community, it’s important for the GRI to grow its collections in this area, says Idurre Alonso, curator of Latin American collections.
One new acquisition (a donation) is El torturado, a drawing created by influential Mexican modernist Alfredo Ramos Martínez in 1938. Blending Mexican subject matter with the simplified forms that characterize modern art, the artwork is part of a series he made on Los Angeles Times newsprint. The artist explored the difficult living conditions of the Mexican migrants exploited in the Depression-era United States.
The GRI has also acquired a set of letters between José Luis Cuevas, considered one of the great masters of Mexican art, and surrealist Cuban artist Jorge Camacho. Their correspondence illuminates Cuevas’s opinions on Mexico’s cultural scene and his development as an artist. He was a key figure of la Ruptura (the Rupture), an artistic movement in the 1950s that aimed to break away from the patriotic tradition of the Mexican muralists. His focus on universal ideas was formative in the 1950s and ’60s, ushering in the era referred to as the Mexican Renaissance of drawing and printmaking.
Lourdes Grobet’s photography series Olmayaztec also explores Mexican subject matter. The images, spanning almost four decades, record a group of monuments designed as replicas of pre-Hispanic buildings. In her exploration of this popular vernacular architecture, Grobet documents what she calls “Disneyfied versions of the pre-Hispanic world…that made me think how precarious national identity is.” Adding to the GRI’s extensive collections relating to pre-Hispanic art, this acquisition offers a critical perspective on how Mexico’s ancient past is used to create a sense of national identity for tourists to consume.
Finally, the archive of notable Argentinian artist David Lamelas is among the first acquired of a Latin American conceptualist. It strengthens the GRI’s rich holdings in conceptual art and joins materials from artists such as Allan Kaprow, Mary Kelly, and Allan Sekula.
In the future, Alonso hopes to bolster collections that relate to underrepresented communities and bring a deeper Latino perspective to the GRI’s collections. Currently, she has her eyes on works by Indigenous artists, especially in photography, and art from Central America.
