September 9, 2026–January 4, 2027
1 Brookings Dr
63130 St. Louis MO
The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis presents Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950, the first exhibition in the United States to examine the inventive activities of a thriving, cross-disciplinary artistic community of locals, exiles, and immigrants living in Buenos Aires during the early twentieth century.
During the late 1930s, European artists, exiles, and refugees began arriving in Buenos Aires in vast numbers. They made the transatlantic journey to escape oppression on multiple fronts, from the Spanish Civil War to World War II to the Holocaust. One of these migrant-artists was Grete Stern, a German Jewish photographer and graphic designer who trained at the Bauhaus before she was forced to flee Germany in 1933. Stern soon married the Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola, and the pair permanently settled in Buenos Aires in 1935. Their marriage and artistic collaboration is emblematic of the many alliances formed across Argentine and European cultures during this period. This exhibition draws extensively from the couple’s personal archives, while also considering their larger creative community, unfolding across three sections.
The first section, “Recent Arrivals: Photography and the Publishing Industry,” focuses on Stern and Coppola’s photographic projects to examine the hybridization of European modernism and Argentine culture in books, magazines, and newspapers. Their collaborations with figures including Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, and Clément Moreau, alongside a selection of exile-run publications, modernist photographs of the city, and anti-fascist illustrations, reveal how a multitude of cultural ideas converged in Buenos Aires during the late 1930s.
The second section, “Adaptations: Modernizing Architecture and Graphic Design,” expands to consider Stern and Coppola’s broader circle of architects and graphic designers who embraced modernism and began to envision alternative modes of living. Italian exile Attilio Rossi modernized graphic design formats and introduced the machine-printed book, contributing to a golden age of publishing in Buenos Aires. Within the built environment, the exiled architect Wladimiro Acosta adapted European modernist architecture to the Argentine climate. The home he designed for Stern and Coppola encouraged communal gathering and the exchange of ideas.
The final section, “Integration: The Argentine Concrete Movement,” considers the young Argentine and Uruguayan artists who gathered at the Stern-Coppola home in the 1940s. These included members of the Madí movement, such as Gyula Kosice and Carmelo Arden Quin, as well as those in the competing group, Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención, including Tomás Maldonado and Lidy Prati. This radical new generation forged an eclectic Argentine Concrete movement in response to European precedents, rejecting figuration and the rectangular frame in favor of pure, angular abstraction. Motivated by Marxist ideologies, they believed that art experienced physically would awaken viewers to their own material conditions in society.
Ultimately, the exhibition reveals how international modernist aesthetics—including Bauhaus art and design, Concrete art, and Constructivism—were not simply adopted but actively transformed within the context of Argentina.
Buenos Aires Modern, 1935–1950 is curated by Dana Ostrander, assistant curator, Kemper Art Museum. A scholarly catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Edited by Ostrander, the book features essays (in English with Spanish translations) by Ostrander and scholars Fernando Luiz Lara, Rachel G. Mohl, and Megan A. Sullivan, as well as a selection of extended artist biographies by Ostrander and Elizabeth Mangone.
The exhibition is 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 Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Hortense Lewin Art Fund; the Ken and Nancy Kranzberg Fund; and members of the Kemper Art Museum.
