León Ferrari was one of the most significant Latin American artists in the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The central theme of his work is the visual body of language. Ferrari was concerned with “revealing truths” through the manipulation of the written word. León’s career has met much resistance due to its controversial, politically-charged nature. Many of his pieces use language as a metaphor of the worldly aspect of human existence. Though he created the bulk of his works throughout the 1960s to 1980s, León was actively producing work until the end of his life, at the age of ninety years-old.
His work can be found in important public collections, including: the Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil; and the Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico City. In October of 2007 he was awarded the Gold Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. In 2010 The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York inaugurated ‘Tangled Alphabets’ a two-artist retrospective of León Ferrari and Mira Schendel. The exhibition in New York was followed by presentations at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía inMadrid; and the FundaçãoIberê Camargo in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
