Alejandra von Hartz, directing her own Wynwood gallery, says contemporary artists she exhibits often reinvent visual language of geometric abstraction, including David E. Peterson, Arthur Lescher.  Time-honored visual language indeed:  From 1934 to 1973, geometric abstraction in Latin American art was especially vibrant.  It’s easy to find in Miami art by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesus Soto, other Latin American Masters known for geometric innovations.  Of course, artists of many eras have investigated compelling powers of color and line.

Wide-spread presence of this approach for artists now, von Hartz says, “is a never-ending experience.  I see artists creating and developing new ideas every day. ” She presented Peterson’s aggressively minimal and curiously three-dimensional work at New York’s VOLTA art fair. She also represents Matthew Deleget, featured in a luminous exhibit merging rectangular forms, architectural space, and color: “Pictures at an Exhibition” at Cress Gallery of Art, University of Tennessee. Curator Ruth Grover praised Deleget’s art as “reductive abstraction,” providing “its own rich sensory experience in response to the broad plurality of our 21st Century world.”

Certainly international popularity of art fairs and biennials enhances ongoing dialogue between art history of geometric abstraction and current ways to make this language new for 21st Century. The Internet, with vast search engines making art and culture a vivid 24/7 digital experience, surely contributes further.

Perhaps incessant information from sources too numerous to name across the globe contributes to the appeal of takes on what both Deleget and Grover call “reductive abstraction.” This art may announce a need to reduce constant clutter everywhere.  Adds von Hartz, the art represents, “strong dialogue with different artists in different places around the world.”  Her gallery is “a launching  point for exploring abstract art in Miami,” says Bryan Granger, Bass Museum Knight Curatorial Fellow.

Also in Miami:  Find more such contemporary artists at Arevalo Gallery.  Director Francisco Arevalo presents art in handsomely designed gallery, epitome of reductive elegance.  Painting and sculpture in various media including stainless steel, canvas, wood by Brazilian artist Macaparana enhance sleek spirit throughout.  There’s playful, architectural elegance to his art.  “He was mentored by important artists from the Neo-Concrete movement in Brazil,” says Arevalo, adding that this movement of the late 1950s ended in 1961. It emphasized a bolder, freer style, reacting to strictures of Concrete Art.  Long-revered values of color and line still exert power today.  Macaparana reinvents a celebrated Latin American geometric tradition, particularly extending from Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela.

Arevalo Gallery recently presented “Extending the Line,” an exquisite exhibit featuring six American and European artists organized by Kaufman Vardy Projects.  Historically resonant language of geometry—color, line, space—is paramount.   Yet as curators Fran Kaufman and Ilana Vardy write, these artists “are keeping the conversation fresh and alive.”

Use of diverse materials is key. Consider works on paper by Gordon Moore with ink and gouache on photo emulsion paper.  His imagery challenges viewers to wonder if they see a shadowy photograph, tensile drawing, reed-thin sculpture or magical mixture of all three.  Constructions by Nan Swid are elegant, shockingly simple.  She works with old sheets of rice paper and materials gleaned from aging books and ledgers.  “She’s in the design world,” says Vardy.  Although her background is not rooted in art history, Swid is “finding beauty in geometry,” Vardy adds.

Deleget, artist and co-founder of innovative Minus Space in Brookyn, explains: “You see a lot of divergence, artists doing really engaging work all over the globe.  Alejandra foregrounds artists from South America. We show a lot of work from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and, of course the States. Compelling work is being made everywhere and for totally different reasons by different artists with different contexts and histories.  And we totally embrace that. Forty years ago, the conversation about the art and its development was very monolithic, very linear.”

Clearly, ramifications of The Miami Line are anything but linear.

A woman ahead of her time, Amelia Peláez (1895-1968) was a pioneer.  Peláez, with Wifredo Lam and Carlos Enríquez, belongs to a significant group of artists who began the modernist Cuban art movement in the 1920s. Often called Vanguardia painters, they were born around the turn of the 20^th Century and witnessed political turmoil engulfing Cuba as it sought to become a sovereign nation. They were pivotal members of a Cuban generation defining its identity.

Most Vanguardia painters studied in Europe before returning to Cuba to paint some of their most renowned works. They fused Modernist styles of such European masters as Matisse and Cézanne with imagery reflecting their homeland’s architectural and Afro-Caribbean cultural traditions, adding generous dollops of brilliant color and jazzy linear rhythms.  Old World Modernist movements such as constructivism and surrealism became part of this unique New World art historical mix.

Miami’s central role as a market for Cuban art reflects the financial and social growth of the city’s Cuban American community, says Alejandro Anreus, art history and Latin American studies professor of New Jersey’s William Paterson University.  Recently Anreus delivered packed lectures at Cernuda Arte on second generation Cuban modernists Mariano Rodríguez and René Portocarrero.

Miami is a must-see marketplace for Cuban art, he adds, thanks to “the work of curators and art historians and galleries.” Their combined efforts demonstrate that “Cuban modernist art is part of the larger story of modernism in the Western Hemisphere.”  Moreover, Latin American art, Anreus explains, “is no longer viewed as a step-child but as an integral part of modernism.”

A new wave of Cuban modernist artists currently catches attention with curators and collectors, dealers and auction houses.   They’re best known for geometric abstractions, exploring hard-edge, clearly defined or “concrete” forms. Generally, these artists do not exult in so-called “hot tropical colors” often pervading paintings by Peláez and Portocarrero.  “The concrete artists from the 1950s were totally forgotten,” says Cernuda, “until a recent museum exhibition in Madrid, called ‘Cold America.’ That movement has really taken off.  It is now being collected at the national level.”

Presented at Madrid’s Juan March Foundation in 2011, “Cold America” tells the story of Latin American geometric abstraction from 1934 to 1973. It brings together some 300 artworks by over 60 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay, Venezuela.  They took cues from artists like Mondrian and Alexander Calder to refashion their own take on this elegant, pared-down aesthetic.  Representing Cuba in this show:  Sandu Darie, also women Lolo Soldevilla, Carmen Herrera.

Several years ago, Herrera was the focus of a superb exhibit in Miami. Once shamefully overlooked, art by both Herrera and Soldevilla gains impressive cachet. “We bought a painting by Soldevilla about four years ago for about $1,000. We now have one going to market at auction with an estimate of $20,000 to $25,000. It will probably sell at the high end,” says Cernuda.  Compared to five years ago, the demand for her art now, he says, is “enormous.

So it goes in the Miami marketplace for Cuban art.  New discoveries, prices, exhibits are ever imminent.  Second generation modernists Mariano and Mario Carreño make waves at auction.  Like Peláez, Carlos Enríquez is overdue for a major exhibition, Anreus says.

Cuba excels in the visual arts. “We can no longer go by conventional boundaries of conventional geography,” Anreus adds.  “Cuban art can be made in Miami, Cuba,  Mexico City, Madrid—anywhere there is a Cuban making art, it is Cuban art.”