In 2022, NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) turns twenty-five. The NYU MFA Program in Creative Writing in Spanish decided to dedicate the May 2022 issue of the student-edited Temporales magazine to the anniversary.

This special issue celebrates an art exhibition and a bilingual poetry reading inspired by the exhibition’s pieces which took place in 2007. The show was called The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, and it was held at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery (September 12- December 8, 2007), in conjunction with the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas. For the newly created MFA Program, this event, which formed part of the KJCC Poetry Reading Series, marked the beginning of its public programming.

It was a happy confluence between the beginning of the MFA, the first of its kind in North America, and The Geometry of Hope, which presented a selection of abstract geometric works produced in Latin America from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Lila Zemborain, the current MFA director, curated the poetry reading to coincide with the exhibition. It featured Latin American poets who read specially commissioned poems based on works of art on display.

250 copies of this special issue of Temporales will be printed and given out as gifts in celebration of the KJCC’s anniversary and the 15th Anniversary of the MFA Program.

The edition features works of art by well-renowned artists like Gego, Lygia Pape, Judith Lauand, Alejandro Otero, Waldemar Cordeiro, Hélio Oiticica, Joaquín Torres García, Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Raúl Lozza, and Alfredo Hlito; and poets like Coral Bracho, Cecilia Vicuña, Yolanda Pantin, Mariela Dreyfus, Jussara Salazar, Edwin Torres, and Roberto Echavarren.

Translations by Lori Cole, Forrest Gander, Mónica de la Torre, Rosa Alcalá, Eileen O’Connor, Urayoán Noel, and Odile Cisneros of the poems are included in the issue.

The issue also features interviews with Rubén Ríos Ávila, former MFA director, and Laura Turégano, KJCC’s Associate Director, and a text by Edward Sullivan, former Dean of Humanities and now NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts’ Deputy Director. His essay, ”The Geometry of Hope. – A Triumphant Exhibition at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery,” tells the story of the show and its influence at NYU and the US art world.

The collaboration between the MFA and the KJCC has always been one of creative effervescence and constant mutual support. In all these years we have organized countless events, presenting talented authors from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and the United States and promoting Spanish as a literary language in the US.

You can see the online version of the Temporales special issue here.