It’s not that Cisneros—who, with her husband, Venezuelan media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, is among the world’s most influential collectors of Latin American art—doesn’t enjoy the dramatic, figurative work that many people in the United States reflexively think of. Rather, Cisneros chooses to focus on geometric abstraction. A native of Caracas, she favors pieces by artists like Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Jesus Soto because they call to mind the art she grew up with during the height of modernism in the 1950s. As a collector, Cisneros finds satisfaction tracking down art from schools such as Arte Concreto that flowered at the same time as the more widely recognized figurative art.

WIFREDO LAM’S 5 Centimetros Sobre La Tierra sold for $688,000 at Sotheby’s last November. (Photograph by Sotheby’s.)

"What was fun about creating the collection of geometric abstraction was that it was done at a time of absolutely no interest in this type of art," she says. "It was exciting to go into galleries, and they would have to go way into the back and dust off all these works."

However, Cisneros says that today she probably would not attempt to amass such a collection because of soaring prices. Twenty years ago, she and her husband spent at most $10,000 for an abstract piece; Cisneros says these pieces would now command from $300,000 to $600,000. Last year alone, Sotheby’s sold $40 million worth of Latin American art, compared to $16.3 million a decade earlier. In Sotheby’s November 2006 sale, two works sold for more than $1 million each; the cover lot, a painting by Colombian Fernando Botero, hit $1.7 million. A piece by the Mexican-born abstract painter Gunther Gerzso from 1957 fetched $620,800—a record for the artist at auction.

The boom in Latin American art, particularly by contemporary artists, reflects surging demand from wealthy Latin American buyers and new interest from non-Latin collectors. The increasing population of Latinos in the United States plays a key role as well. A growing group of successful Latinos connect to their roots by buying Latin American art. Meanwhile, museums, particularly in the Southwest, that neglected the category in recent decades acquire the pieces partly to appeal to the rising Hispanic population. "In the beginning, it was much more segmented, but now some of the top bidders in our auctions are not even Latin American," says Maria Bonta de la Pezuela, director of Latin America at Sotheby’s. "People bring their eyes and tastes, and buy what moves them—and that has nothing to do with the fact that the palm tree in a painting reminds them of the house where they grew up."

GUNTHER GERZSO’S Paisaje went for $620,800 at the same auction.

Although the region encompasses the entire territory south of the Rio Grande, buyers compete for an extremely limited supply of works. In the early 20th century, for example, there were far fewer artists in Mexico producing far fewer paintings than in the United States. After the revolution, no art market even existed. Collector Lance Aaron, an American who lives with his Mexico-born wife and children in Mexico City, is known as one of the world’s premier collectors of early 20th century Mexican modern paintings, sculpture and folk/popular arts. He estimates that there are fewer than 1,000 museum-quality pieces by Mexican artists from the years 1920 to 1950, and similar situations exist in other Latin American countries. Latin American museums have already snatched up many of the great pieces, and those that do become available often change hands privately, rather than appear in public auctions.

Yet Latin American art remains attractive to collectors because of the diversity of the works—and the bargain prices compared to other contemporary art. Works by Cuban artist Wifredo Lam provide a case in point. At Sotheby’s November sale, an anonymous bidder paid $688,000—double the high estimate—for Lam’s 1955 painting 5 Centimetros Sobre La Tierra. Yet aficionados revere Lam for his sophisticated cubist paintings, which many consider on par with those of his friend and contemporary, Pablo Picasso, who routinely fetches millions.

The same comparison holds true for well-established Latin American artists and contemporary American artists. New York–based dealer Mary-Anne Martin, whom many credit with launching the market for Latin American art in the U.S. by organizing the first such sale at Sotheby’s in the late 1970s, believes that the run-up in prices for work by contemporary American artists such as Jeff Koons and Lisa Yuskavage makes more-affordable Latin American artists, whose popularity has endured for decades, appealing. "This is a market where there are tried and true artists whose work represents a more established and secure purchase than work by younger artists," she says.