Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)

From Other Means (with added links):

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art’s visual identity draws on Latin American contributions to Modernist design history that are not often accentuated. A bold color system is paired with a new typeface reminiscent of the inventiveness of South American concrete poetry. As can be read in the “L” shape of the logo, sometimes a strict grid allows for a play on words.

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is a private research institute based in New York City that has supported Latin American art research for over a decade. Other Means was drawn to ISLAA’s own idiosyncratic collection and groundbreaking research initiatives, which have made new connections between lesser-known movements in Latin American art and canonical design movements in both the United States and Europe.

Figures such as Tomás Maldonado, who developed the Ulm Model and oriented design education towards systems-thinking, were involved in avant-garde movements in Argentina, (like Arte Concreto-Invención) before their more well-known and undeniable contributions to design history.

By some accounts, concrete poetry emerged simultaneously in Europe and Brazil in the year 1953—Augusto de Campos working from São Paulo, the Swiss-Bolivian poet Eugen Gomringer publishing in Ulm, and the Brazilian-born Swedish poet Öyvind Fahlström writing from Stockholm. ISLAA’s exhibitions and events have shed light on the Swiss Concretist Max Bill’s participation in the art worlds of South America, including a seminal exhibition in São Paulo in 1950 that is cited for its contributions to the realm of thought that sprung “Poesía Concreta”.

Building on these transatlantic transmissions, the visual language, and the website, we designed and developed, present the institute with an aesthetic assertiveness that supports the bold research and commitment to new forms of scholarship that ISLAA undertakes.