Vanguardistas

In Vanguardistas: 100 Years of Latin American Women Artists, the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart devotes the first major survey exhibition in Switzerland to pioneering women artists from Latin America. Produced in international collaboration with partner institutions in Belgium, Germany, and Finland, the show gathers works spanning over a century by more than seventy artists, among them significant pieces by internationally renowned figures, including the Colombians Olga de Amaral (b. 1932) and Doris Salcedo (b. 1958), the British-Mexican Leonora Carrington (1917–2011), the Paraguayan Claudia Casarino (b. 1974), the Brazilian Lygia Clark (1920–1988), the Cuban-Americans Carmen Herrera (1915–2022) and Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), the Mexicans Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Teresa Margolles (b. 1963), the Argentine Marta Minujín (b. 1943), and the Chilean Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948).

Vanguardistas turns the spotlight on women artists whose works have been instrumental in shaping the development of modern and contemporary art in Latin America. The exhibition explores what avant-gardism has meant in Latin America—not as a stylistic tendency but as a polyphonic ensemble of interconnected cultural, social, and political movements. On view across the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart’s three gallery floors, the sprawling exhibition examines artistic avant-gardes, wrenching social changes, and political struggles as well as questions of identity, the body, territory, and belonging.

Historical and contemporary works trace an arc spanning several generations, multiple media, and diverse geographical contexts. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, films, and performances demonstrate how closely developments in art are linked to Latin America’s historical, social, and cultural transformations—from efforts to grapple with colonial traditions, urbanization, and political upheavals to today’s concerns with memory and social justice.

Rather than setting out a linear narrative, Vanguardistas frames novel and multifaceted perspectives to reconstruct the evolution of individual creative projects as well as artists’ close-knit international networks—both within Latin America and with colleagues in Europe and North America.

The exhibition brings together works on loan from the most important museums and collections in North America, South America, and Europe, including the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, and the Tate, London. In many instances, it is the first time these works are traveling to Switzerland or even to Europe.

"Vanguardistas: 100 Years of Latin American Women Artists" is an exhibition produced by the Kunstmuseum Basel, EMMA—Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn.