Leonardo Finotti: LATINITUDES

Brazilian photographer and visual artist Leonardo Finotti discusses Latinitudes and his long-term project documenting modern architecture across Latin America, including the development of the exhibition and its accompanying publication series with Lars Müller Publishers. The talk is followed by a reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.

Latinitudes, presented for the first time in the United States, is a photographic survey of modern architecture across twelve Latin American cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bogotá, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Havana, Cuba; Lima, Peru; Mexico City, Mexico; Montevideo, Uruguay; Quito, Ecuador; San José, Costa Rica; Santiago, Chile; and São Paulo, Brazil. Featuring more than 100 photographs by Finotti and curated by Brazilian architect Michelle Jean de Castro, the exhibition presents modern architecture across Latin America from a new perspective. Combining the words "latitudes" and "Latino," the exhibition proposes a horizontal framework connecting cities across shared geographies and histories, presenting housing, civic, and cultural works by key figures of modernism—Luis Barragán, Lina Bo Bardi, Roberto Burle Marx, Félix Candela, Eladio Dieste, Emilio Duhart, Ricardo Legorreta, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Oscar Niemeyer, Juan O'Gorman, Mario Pani, Ricardo Porro, Rogelio Salmona, Clorindo Testa, and Carlos Raúl Villanueva, among others.
Leonardo Finotti is a visual artist based in São Paulo, Brazil, whose work centers on two complementary themes: modern architecture and anonymous or informal urban spaces. Trained as an architect, he holds a bachelor of arts in architecture from the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia; completed postgraduate studies at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany; and began his career in Portugal before returning to Brazil to embark on a long-term photographic project that revisits and reinterprets the legacy of modern architecture across Latin America and beyond. Alongside collaborations with international architects, institutions, and publications, Finotti has produced a number of independent projects through exhibitions and books, including Pelada (2014); Latinitudes (2015); Rio Enquadrado (2016); A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture (Lars Müller, 2016); and Sacred Groves & Secret Parks (2019). His work has been widely exhibited and is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur (Switzerland); Fundação EDP (Portugal); Architekturzentrum Wien (Austria); Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Germany); and Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia (Brazil), among others. He has represented Brazil at two International Architecture Exhibitions, La Biennale di Venezia; the 10th Mercosul Art Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; and was a prizewinner at the 15th Buenos Aires International Biennial of Architecture.

For more information on the exhibition, Latinitudes: A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture, click here.

Image: Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo (Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House and Studio), Mexico City, Mexico, designed by Juan O'Gorman, 1931–32. Photograph by Leonardo Finotti, 2014. © Leonardo Finotti

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