Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950 / Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots

The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis announces its fall 2026 exhibitions, Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950 and Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots, on view September 9, 2026–January 4, 2027.

Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950 offers new perspectives on the development of modern art in Argentina through the lens of exile, displacement, and cultural exchange. Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots encourages active rethinking of humanity’s relationship with nature, emphasizing our connection to place, to what sustains us, and what we can do to reciprocate. The exhibitions reflect the Museum’s commitment to advancing art historical scholarship and presenting thought-provoking explorations of issues relevant to today’s world.

Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950
This exhibition is the first in the United States to examine the vibrant artistic community that emerged in Buenos Aires during the years surrounding the Spanish Civil War and World War II, when more than 200,000 Europeans, including many Jewish refugees, fled to Argentina. Newly arrived artists, architects, designers, and writers encountered an already thriving artistic scene, and their multidirectional exchanges with local creators reshaped the Porteño art world and spurred new approaches to modern art and design.

Anchored in the work of Grete Stern, Horacio Coppola, and their expansive artistic network, the exhibition explores a range of mediums: photography and publishing in the late 1930s, modernist architecture and graphic design during the early 1940s, and nonfigurative painting and sculpture that emerged as part of an eclectic Argentine concrete movement during the mid-1940s. Ultimately, Buenos Aires Modern reveals how cultural hybridization led not only to the adoption but also the multiplication of international modernisms in Argentina’s capital city.

This exhibition is curated by Dana Ostrander, assistant curator at the Kemper Art Museum. An illustrated catalog edited by Ostrander and distributed by the University of Chicago Press will accompany the exhibition.

Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots
A solo exhibition of new and recent work by the Los Angeles–based Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo, Growing Deep Roots brings together sculpture, drawings, prints, and videos that address the interrelated issues of water and land stewardship and just energy transition. Drawing on environmental justice frameworks, traditional knowledge systems, and ecofeminism, the exhibition highlights Caycedo’s continued engagement with rivers and the socio-ecological impacts of extractive development alongside works that imagine more sustainable futures.

The exhibition features work from several of Caycedo’s ongoing series alongside new commissions created for the presentation, including a large-scale relief print produced at WashU's Island Press earlier this year. Concurrently, Caycedo will present the site-specific hanging sculpture Fiesta de las Raíces as part of Counterpublic, a public art triennial in St. Louis. Together, these works proffer an understanding of nature not as a resource to be exploited but as a living entity that unites people beyond borders. This exhibition is curated by Meredith Malone, the Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg Curator and senior curator at the Kemper Art Museum.

Public programs including lectures, tours, and community events will be presented in conjunction with both exhibitions.

Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950 and Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots are made possible by the leadership support of the William T. Kemper Foundation. All exhibitions at the Kemper Art Museum are supported by members of the Director’s Circle, with major annual support provided by Emily and Teddy Greenspan and additional generous annual support from Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice, Julie Kemper Foyer, Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern, David and Dorothy Kemper, Ron and Pamela Mass, and Kim and Bruce Olson. Further support is provided by the Hortense Lewin Art Fund, the Ken and Nancy Kranzberg Fund, and members of the Kemper Art Museum.

The Kemper Art Museum is part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at WashU.