Zero Grade 1948 Museum Collection has Displayed in Art

The Museum of Modern Art presents ‘Zero Grade: Mid-Century Drawing’, an exhibition showing approximately 80 drawings made between 1948 and 1961 exclusively from the Museum’s collection. November 01, 2020 – February 06, 2021.

“Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury” looks at art movements, geographies, and generations to highlight the connections between various artists who used drawing to forge a new visual language after World War II.

Simple, immediate and direct drawing was using a phrase that circulated among artists and writers during these years ideal medium “degree zero” for this moment “degree zero”.

Within this movement common to artists around the world, drawing took many forms, from the abstract to the figurative, from the organic to the artificial. Whether by scribbled graffiti or looped calligraphy, with reduced geometry, or by recording movement by creating marks

With a global focus, the exhibition features American artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Sari Dienes, Ellsworth Kelly and Jackson Pollock; European artists such as Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet, Henri Matisse and Sonja Sekula.

Latin American artists like Hércules Barsotti, Raúl Milián, Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar and Alfredo Volpi and Asian artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Joong Seop Lee, Saburo Murakami, and Morita Yasuji.

Nigerian artist Uche Okeke, whose drawing practice derives from both the Igbo tradition and Western Modernism, is also present with works presented for the first time since their acquisition by the Museum in 2015. “Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury” is organized by Samantha Friedman, from the Museum’s Department of Drawing and Engraving.