El Museo del Barrio is proud to announce Luis Camnitzer, a traveling exhibition exploring five decades of work by the conceptual artist and writer Luis Camnitzer organized by Daros Latinamerica, Zurich, will be on view February 2 – May 29, 2011.
Curated by Hans-Michael Herzog, director of Daros Latinamerica, and Katrin Steffen, co- curator, this fascinating retrospective includes approximately 70 pieces dating from 1966 to the present, assembled from the Daros Latinamerica Collection. The exhibition is part of El Museo’s FOCOS series, which highlights mature, under-recognized artists.
A pioneer of conceptual art, Camnitzer takes a firm socio-political stance. At the heart of his work lies the idea that artists are not first creators of paintings or sculptures, but rather primarily ethical beings sifting right from wrong and just from unjust. He works in a variety of media—including installation, printmaking, drawing, and photography.
A fully illustrated catalogue in English and Spanish published by Hatje Cantz Verlag accompanies the exhibition. In addition to a conversation between Luis Camnitzer and Hans-Michael Herzog, the publication includes essays by Sabeth Buchmann, Antonio Eligio
Fernández (Tonel), Michael Glasmeier, Maren Welsch, and Camnitzer, along with a preface by Cullen.
ABOUT LUIS CAMNITZER
Luis Camnitzer was born in Germany in 1937, grew up in Montevideo, Uruguay and has lived and worked in New York since 1964. He received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1961 and 1982 and, has made his mark internationally not only as an artist but as a critic, educator and art theorist. Formally allied with the American Conceptualists of the 1960s and 1970s, over the past 50 years Camnitzer has developed an essentially autonomous oeuvre. Through his art Camnitzer often plays with the role of audience as silent witness and accomplice, within the arts as well as politics, often drawing on his youth in Montevideo under a repressive government that the international community allowed to persist.
Camnitzer studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Uruguay, and the Academy of Munich. Today he is a frequent contributor to the magazine ArtNexus. He is the author of New Art of Cuba (1994, 2003) and Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation (2007). His visual works have appeared in numerous exhibitions, and are represented in the permanent collections of various international institutions including Tate Modern, MoMA, and El Museo del Barrio.
Retrospectives of his work have been presented at Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx (1991) and Kustshalle Kiel in Germany (2003). His work has appeared in biennials and group shows, including Information (1970), The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Biennial of Havana (1984, 1986, and 1991); Venice Biennale (1988); Whitney Biennial (2000); Documenta 11 (2002); Beyond Geometry (2005), Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The New York Graphics Workshop (2008), Blanton Museum, University of Texas.