“How to explain the sudden renown of 90-year-old artist León Ferrari? Few knew this Argentinean figure before he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennial in 2007. When his MoMA exhibition was announced in 2009 (a retrospective he weirdly shared with the late Brazilian conceptualist Mira Schendel), news of the show elicited as many blank stares as it did words of praise. So how did the work of a mostly forgotten South American gadfly go from last century’s oblivion to this season’s revelation?
Ferrari’s story is, among other things, part of the larger narrative of the making and unmaking of artistic influence—especially as it applies to the world’s two most influential museums, namely MOMA and the Tate. Another artist whose career, like Marina Abramovic’s, announces the expansion of these buttoned-down institutions into new arenas of art history, Ferrari and his newfound popularity effectively illustrate the most recent reinvention of the worldwide modernist canon.
via Village Voice Article Wednesday, Feb 9 2011
León Ferrari exhibition at MoMA (with Mira Schendel)
His website containing all his work is here
