Esteban Lisa at Museu Fundación Juan March

After its presentation in Palma, Majorca, Spain, the exhibition will travel to the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, Spain from the 2nd of June till September 3rd, and then to the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College (Boston, U.S.A.) from the 15th of September till December10th. This is the first of a new series of small-scale exhibitions (AL/Artists from Latin America) designed by the Fundación Juan March with a view to providing an overview of leading figures in twentieth-century Latin American art.

This small cabinet exhibition focuses on a selection of 37 works produced between 1930 and 1968 by Esteban Lisa (Hinojosa de San Vicente, Toledo, Spain, 1895−Buenos Aires, 1983). It comprises small-format paintings on paper and cardboard together with a range of documents drawn mostly from private collections. Hailed as a pioneering exponent of abstract art, both in Latin America and Spain, Lisa was also a theorist and a committed teacher. Since he never displayed the slightest interest in exhibiting or selling his work during his lifetime, his international fame came posthumously.

The catalogue of the present exhibition, published in both Spanish and English, includes a chronology and bibliography of the artist and a text by Rafael Argullol focusing on Lisa’s essay Kant, Einstein and Picasso (originally published in Buenos Aires in 1956 as the inaugural manifesto of the “Four Dimensions” School of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, founded by Lisa), together with a semi-facsimile reproduction of the original. It also contains an essay by Edward Sullivan, Professor of Art History at New York University.