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The IDB Cultural Center opens “Abstraction Abstracción Abstração: Sophistication in Brazilian Art”

The exhibition honoring Brazil explores the country's aesthetic complexity and creativity

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) presents the exhibition “Abstraction Abstracción Abstração: Sophistication in Brazilian Art,” as a special tribute to Brazil, site of the 55th Annual Meeting of the IDB’s Board of Governors, taking place in Costa do Sauípe, Bahia, March 27–30. The exhibit in Washington, DC is already open to the public and will run until May 16, 2014 .

"Abstraction, Abstracción, Abstração" presents a group of paintings by 16 of Brazil’s most well-known 20th century abstract artists. It is a balanced exhibition showing artwork by eight women and eight men, unusual for most art shows and even rarer in the history of art in general. The artworks in this exhibition are both non-objective and abstract. They were created purely for aesthetic reasons using practiced painting or printmaking skills and principles of art, creating not only visually interesting work, but thought-provoking work, in profound search of the utmost understanding of light, color, textures, and technical processes to achieve an intimate connection between their artworks and the viewers.

“This art is neither defined by its representations of vernacular culture, religion, history, or, in general, context itself, nor through the use of symbols but through a specific way of making contemporary art,” according to critic and historian Gerardo Mosquera. “It is an identity detached from "identity," an identity based on action not on representation. This is also praxis of art as art that establishes identifiable constants, and builds a cultural typology through its way of making art, while not stressing the cultural factors interjected into it.”

Brazil constantly demonstrates outstanding originality, creative renewal, and advancement in the arts within a universal context. This group of artworks from the art collections of the IDB and AMA-Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States, is a celebration of Brazil’s aesthetic complexity.

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