LATINITUDES: A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture

Curated by Michelle Jean de Castro.

Presented for the first time in the United States, Latinitudes is a photographic survey of modern architecture across twelve Latin American cities, organized from south to north: Montevideo, Uruguay; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; São Paulo, Brazil; Lima, Peru; Quito, Ecuador; Bogotá, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; San José, Costa Rica; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Mexico City, Mexico; and Havana, Cuba. Featuring more than 100 photographs by Brazilian photographer Leonardo Finotti and curated by Brazilian architect Michelle Jean de Castro, the exhibition presents modern architecture across Latin America from a new perspective. 

Combining the words “latitudes” and “Latin,” Latinitudes proposes a horizontal framework connecting cities across shared geographies and histories. Housing, civic, and cultural works by key figures of modernism—Luis Barragán, Lina Bo Bardi, Roberto Burle Marx, Félix Candela, Eladio Dieste, Emilio Duhart, Ricardo Legorreta, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Oscar Niemeyer, Juan O’Gorman, Mario Pani, Ricardo Porro, Rogelio Salmona, Clorindo Testa, and Carlos Raúl Villanueva, among others—are presented within an interconnected architectural landscape spanning Latin America.

Organized from south to north by latitude, the exhibition draws on Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García's América invertida (1943) and his declaration in his 1934 lecture manuscript La Escuela del Sur (The School of the South) that "our north is the south." Where Torres-García inverted the map to challenge axes of power, de Castro and Finotti place each city on the same horizon—without hierarchy. Installed across two floors of the Graham Foundation's Madlener House, the photographs are monochrome prints on aluminum composite panels aligned along a continuous horizon line, offering a new view of Latin American modern architecture and its enduring impact on global modernism.

Rooted in nearly two decades of fieldwork across Latin America, Finotti’s practice spans exhibitions and publications as a long-term effort to document the region’s modern architecture. The exhibition coincides with the release of A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture, Volume 2 (Lars Müller Publishers, 2025), the second in a three-volume series. Finotti received a Graham Foundation grant in 2017 to support the research underlying this volume, and a forthcoming third volume will extend the project beyond capital cities to additional urban and regional contexts.

Leonardo Finotti is a visual artist based in São Paulo. His work engages modern and contemporary architecture through sustained photographic projects and collaborations with architects including Álvaro Siza, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, and Isay Weinfeld. Over the past two decades, he has extensively documented modern architecture across Latin America and has undertaken an extensive survey of Oscar Niemeyer’s work. Finotti’s work has been widely exhibited and is held in major public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Michelle Jean de Castro is an architect and curator based in Stockholm whose work examines the spatial and material dimensions of memory, absence, and displacement.

Presented at the Graham Foundation in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Latinitudes was selected by Florencia Rodriguez, Artistic Director of SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change. The exhibition is organized at the Graham Foundation by Sarah Herda, director, and Ava Barrett, program and communications manager. Latinitudes originated as a project of LAMA.SP (Latin American Modern Architecture, São Paulo), an artist-run space founded by Michelle Jean de Castro and Leonardo Finotti. First presented in São Paulo in 2015, the exhibition has since traveled to institutions across Latin America and Europe, including Bogotá, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Montevideo, and Quito. 

Related events
Thursday, April 30, 6pm
Military Gardens: Roberto Burle Marx in Brasília
Grantee Talk by Catherine Seavitt

Thursday, June 25, 6pm
Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art
Grantee Talk by Patricio del Real

Learn more about Latinitudes and related programming at the Graham Foundation here.

About the Graham Foundation
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. For updates on our programming and grantees, join our mailing list.