Past Exhibit

The MADI Museum, in collaboration with the Kolodzei Art Foundation, opens Historic MADI: Its Roots on Friday, February 17, 2006 running until June 18. Curators Dorothy Masterson and Natalia Kolodzei have been working for almost a year gathering examples of pre-MADI artists as well as contemporary exploration in geometric abstraction from Russia, Uruguay and Argentina to illustrate the origin or roots of the MADI Movement begun in 1946 by a group headed by Carmelo Arden Quin in Buenos Aires. Also in the exhibit are historical documents recently acquired by the Mastersons including possibly the only surviving copy of Arturo (1944) which includes the MADI manifesto by Carmelo Arden Quin.

The Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc., organizes exhibitions in museums and cultural centers in the United States, Russia and other countries utilizing the considerable resources of the Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art. The Kolodzei Art Foundation also provides art supplies to Russian artists and organizes Russian-American cultural exchanges. The collection of Natalia Kolodzei and her mother, Tatiana (who began collecting over forty years ago), consists of over 7,000 art objects including paintings, drawings and sculpture by more than 300 artists from Russia and the former Soviet Union. Recent exhibition venues include the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), the Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the Harriman Institute of Columbia University (New York), the Leepa-Ratner Museum of St. Petersburg College (Florida) and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. For more information, refer to their website, www.KolodzeiArt.org. Geometric artists from the collection or borrowed from private collectors included in the MADI show are are El Lissitzky, Ilya Chashnik, Nikolai Suetin, Iakov Chernikhov,
Alexandra Exter, Liubov Popova, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko,
Varvara Stepanova, Leonid Borisov, Valentina Lebedeva-Lesin, Andrei
Proletsky, Leonid Borisov, Leonid Lamm, Vyacheslav Koleichuk, San San
(Alexander Karasev), Mikhail Molochnikov, Gennadii Zubkov, and Eduard
Shteinberg.

Dorothy Masterson’s research into early geometric artists from Uruguay and Argentina is realized in the show through the works of artists including the following; from Uruguay - Joaquín Torres Garcia, Rodd Rothfuss, Bolivar, Carmelo Arden Quin and Volf Roitman; and from Argentina - Martin Blaszko, Tomás Maldonado, Gina Ionesco, Diyi Laañ, Gyula Kosice and Enio Iommi.

The MADI Museum is housed with the law firm of Kilgore and Kilgore from whom they are partially funded; funding also comes from museum members and the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs.

See show catalog