RADAR / Read
Postmodern Architecture: Less is a Bore
Loló Soldevilla: Constructing Her Universe
This volume takes its subtitle from postmodern icon Robert Venturi’s retort to Mies van der Rohe’s dictum “less is more”. London-based writer and curator Owen Hopkins surveys one of the last century’s most controversial styles, which began in the 1970s, reached its zenith in the 1980s and 1990s, and is currently enjoying both a reappraisal and a revival following a couple of decades languishing in the category of “bad taste”. The book features some gleefully nonconformist postmodern architecture from around the globe by names such as Ettore Sottsass, Aldo Rossi, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves, Robert Stern and James Stirling.
The career of Dolores “Loló” Soldevilla (19011971) first blossomed in the 1950s, when, after a period of teaching, she emerged as a passionate and prolific abstract artist and cultural advocate for her native Cuba. Living in Paris and studying under prominent European artists such as Ossip Zadkine and Léopold Kretz, she became Cuba’s cultural attaché to Europe. After returning to her home country, she continued to be a vital link between the European avant-garde and the new voices of abstraction emerging in Cuba and throughout Latin America. This monograph is the first book devoted solely to her life and work.
by Owen Hopkins (Phaidon)
by Olga Viso and Rafael Diaz Casas (Hatje Cantz)
24
