Image: Dan Flavin, untitled (to Thordis and Heiner), 1966–71. © Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Billy Jim, New York.
Buenos Aires’ Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba) is set to open a major presentation devoted to Dan Flavin, the American artist whose fluorescent light sculptures helped redefine the possibilities of sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. Titled 'Luz, color y espacio', the exhibition runs from June 12 to August 17, 2026, at Malba Museum in Buenos Aires and is organized by the Dia Art Foundation.
According to the museum, the show brings together key bodies of work produced between the 1960s and 1970s and offers a major presentation of one of the pioneers of American minimalism. Flavin is known for using industrial fluorescent tubes in standard colors and forms to create immersive environments that activate exhibition architecture and challenge conventional boundaries around what can count as art. The exhibition title frames that relationship between light, color and space as the core of the project.
The exhibition includes historical early-career works, among them Flavin’s homages to Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin and to the death of war victims, the latter first shown in the influential 'Primary Structures' exhibition. The museum also highlights the large installation 'untitled (t o you, Heiner, with admiration and affection)' from 1973, described as a gesture toward Dia founder Heiner Friedrich. These works are presented as part of a broader account of Flavin’s development from early experiments to his later spatial environments.
The project also foregrounds Flavin’s long association with Dia Art Foundation. Malba’s exhibition text notes that Dia holds the most important collection of his work and maintains a permanent space devoted to him in Bridgehampton, New York. Founded in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich and Helen Winkler, Dia was created to support artists undertaking ambitious projects that might otherwise not be realized because of their scale or scope. The institution now operates nine permanent sites in the United States and Germany, along with temporary exhibition spaces in New York state.
Malba’s page identifies Jessica Morgan and Min Sun Jeon as curators of 'Luz, color y espacio'. The exhibition is located on Level 2 of the museum, and guided visits are scheduled for Wednesdays and Saturdays at 5 p.m. The museum’s agenda lists the exhibition as part of its 2026 program and notes the opening date as June 12.
Flavin’s biography on the museum site situates him as a New York-born artist who worked primarily with fluorescent light. It notes that after brief study at the Hans Hofmann School and coursework in art history at Columbia University, he began creating "icons" in 1961 before moving in 1963 to commercial fluorescent tubes. From 1964 onward he made a series of site-specific fluorescent installations for venues including Documenta 4 in Kassel in 1968, the National Gallery of Canada in 1969 and the Museum of Art in St. Louis in 1973. He died in New York in 1996. The Buenos Aires exhibition remains on view until August 17.
