Originating at the Blanton Museum of Art and organized by its Latin American curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, The Geometry of Hope features over 125 works produced by artists from Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina between 1930 and 1970. A respected scholar in the field, specializing in Argentinian Madi art (one of the movements represented in the exhibition), Pérez-Barreiro has assembled the most comprehensive presentation to date of the alternative modernity that due to a wide array of factors—chief among them the influx of avant-garde European ideas, works, and people between and in the wake of the two World Wars—flourished in the Atlantic coast region of South America. Defying ingrained assumptions, this important segment of Latin American art is diametrically opposed to all stereotypes associated with local colorful subject matter married to the misadventures of Surrealism, Magical Realism, and Social Realism. The Cisneros Collection, based in Caracas, Venezuela, is the largest reservoir of these singular productions and has slowly leaked into MoMA where, as trustees and major donors, the couple has a significant stake. In the introduction to the impressive exhibition catalogue, Pérez-Barreiro presents the two dominant positions used to discuss the work in question: the contextual mode, which takes geography as...