Miami, with a Latin rhythm: the region's art boosts the market

The continent's talent will once again surprise during Art Basel Miami Beach week; Pinta, the only fair specializing in Latin American artists, will add performance and music.

It was early autumn in New York when Pinta, the only fair specializing in Latin American art, began there in the best possible way, in 2007, with the support of major collectors such as Estrellita Brodsky, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and Eduardo Costantini. The latter, founder of the Malba (Museum of Latin American Art), purchased there the photographic record of a 1985 performance by Marta Minujín, which symbolized the payment of Argentina's foreign debt to Andy Warhol. The Institute for Latin American Art Studies (ISLAA) acquired the other two editions shortly afterward, which it later donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where Argentina's most popular artist has since been represented, also at MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Met.

This is just one example of the ground gained in less than two decades by the region's creative talent. Today, while Frida Kahlo has just broken another auction record for Latin America and for women artists globally, and the MFAH is preparing to dedicate a major exhibition to the Mexican artist starting in January, MoMA is presenting the first retrospective in the United States of Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, and the Guggenheim is dedicating another exhibition to the ceramics of Lucio Fontana. The MACA in Uruguay also plans to open another exhibition this summer of the dual-national artist, born in Rosario in 1899, but considered Italian in the international art market.

This explains why, at the Art Basel Miami Beach edition next week, the Tornabuoni Gallery will offer one of Fontana's famous slashed canvases for four million euros. At the same booth, from December 5 to 7, works by Lam, Roberto Matta, and Fernando Botero will be exhibited to "celebrate the ties between the art of Italy and Latin America." Lam and Fontana will also be well represented at the same fair by the Mazzoleni Gallery, while Richard Saltoun will include Olga De Amaral, born in Bogotá 93 years ago, among his “pioneering Latin American artists.” Last year, De Amaral inaugurated her first major retrospective in Europe at the Cartier Foundation and participated in the Venice Biennale.

At that major international event, which for the first time was curated by a Latin American, Argentina was represented by Luciana Lamothe. The artist will now participate in Art Basel with the French gallery Alberta Pane in the Nova section, dedicated to works created in the last three years. Two Buenos Aires galleries, Rolf Art and W-galería, will also be present, along with four other Buenos Aires galleries—Ruth Benzacar, Barro, Isla Flotante, and Pasto—in different sections of this fair, which brings together 283 galleries from 43 countries at the Miami Beach Convention Center.