Untitled

For Schendel, 1964 was a year of daring artistic experimentation. She oscillated between representation and abstraction and explored new materials, such as rice paper and the red earth of São Paulo, which she mixed with her oil paints. Here, Schendel strips painting of its canvas to expose its coarse wooden stretcher hammered with nails. Crude yet vulnerable, this grid presents itself not as an optical schema but rather as a constructed object with a tactile dimension. The artist noted, “I give the utmost importance to [art] being manual like this, that it be handmade, that it be experienced.”

Credit: Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of...