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Cold America
Geometric Abstraction
in Latin America (1934-1973)
2011

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Fundación Juan March
Fundación Juan March
Fundación Juan March
 Cold
America Geometric
Abstraction in
Latin América
(1934–1973)

F u n dac i ó n J uan Mar c h

Fundación Juan March

This catalogue and its Spanish edition are published
on the occasion of the exhibition

Cold America
Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934–1973)
Fundación Juan March
Madrid
February 11–May 15, 2011

Fundación Juan March

Acknowledgments
The Fundación Juan March wishes to express its gratitude to the following We are also grateful to the authors of the catalogue: María Amalia García, Ferreira
individuals and institutions for their collaboration, assistance, and the loan of Gullar, Michael Nungesser, César Paternosto, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Luis Pérez-Oramas, and
works that have made this exhibition possible: Osbel Suárez.

ARGENTINA: Colección Blaquier: Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Fabio Minotti; MALBA: Eduardo The artists: Hércules Barsotti; Martín Blaszko; Omar Carreño; Salvador Corratgé; Carlos Cruz-
Costantini, Victoria Giraudo, Cintia Mezza, and Marcelo Pacheco; Museo Eduardo Sívori: Gabriel Diez; Narciso Debourg; Thomaz Farkas; María Freire; Gaspar Gasparian; Carmen Herrera; Enio
Kargieman and María Isabel de Larrañaga; Orly Benzacar; Mario Gradowzcyk (in memoriam) Iommi; Gyula Kosice; Judith Lauand; Germán Lorca; Tomás Maldonado; Mateo Manaure;
and Felisa Gradowzcyk; Graciela Hasper; Mauro Herlitzka; Raul Naon. Almir Mavignier; Juan Melé; César Paternosto; Rafael Soriano; Luis Tomasello; Víctor Valera;
Alexandre Wollner; José Yalenti.
BRAZIL: Base7: Ricardo Ribenboim, Maria Eugênia Saturni, Arnaldo Spindel, and Daniela
Vicedomini; Dan Galeria: Glaucia and Peter Cohn, Flávio Cohn, Ulisses Cohn, Silvia Cajado; The artists’ relatives and agents: Sofía Arden Quin; Fabiana de Barros; Tony Bechara; Martha
Fundación Bienal de São Paulo: Natália Leoni; Fundação José e Paulina Nemirovsky: Soraya Flora Carranza Barba; Walter de Castro; O Mundo de Lygia Clark: Alessandra Clark; Analivia
Bataglia, Maria Alice Milliet; Instituto Moreira Salles: Sergio Burgi, Flávio Pinheiro, Samuel Titán, Cordeiro; Adriana Cruz Delgado; Carlos Cruz Delgado; Ana Espinosa; Maria Lydia Fiaminghi;
Odette Vieira; MAM-SP: Andrés I. M. Hernández, Ana Paula dos Santos; MASP: Eugênia Gorini Luiza Fortes; Fundación Esteban Lisa; Fundación Gego: Bárbara Gunz; Gaspar Gasparian Filho;
Esmeraldo, Marina Moura, José Teixeira Coelho Neto; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo: Javier Gutiérrez-Cueto Galán; Alejandra von Hartz; Sonia Hlito; Thiago Lupo Maluf; Fenando
Natasha Barzaghi Geenen, Marcelo Mattos Araujo; Bruno Assami; Eliana Benchimol; Augusto Martínez; Daniela Matera; Alejandra Matiz; Sonia Menezes; Fabiane Moraes; Sofía Muller;
de Campos; Fabio Coutinho; Carmela Gross; Célia Cristina V. Kunigonis; Luiz Renato Martins; César and Claudio Oiticica; Projeto Lygia Pape: Paula Pape; Carolina Otero Pardo; Mercedes
Ricardo Ohtake; Roberta Saraiva; Alfredo Setúbal. Otero Pardo; Macalis Soldevilla.

CUBA: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana: Moraima Clavijo Colom, Javier Cortizas Levi, Likewise, we wish to thank Marta Bernardes and Cayetana Martínez for their assistance
Luz Merino Acosta, Hortensia Montero Méndez, Heriberto Rodríguez, María Cristina Ruiz in managing author copyrights; Guillermo Nagore, for the catalogue design and layout; the
Gutiérrez, Elsa Vega Dopico; Ana González Morejón; Yonny Ibáñez (in memoriam); Desiderio editors and proofreaders Inés d’Ors and Erica Witschey; the translators: Michael Agnew, Sonia
Navarro; Pedro de Oraá; Yorjan Pérez Valdés; Enrique Pineda-Barnet; Orestes Vidal; Raquel Villa. López, Catarina Oliveira Paiva, Vanesa Rodríguez Galindo, Pedro Santa María de Abreu; the
conservators: Lourdes Rico and Celia Martínez. Finally, we express our appreciation to José
ENGLAND: Tate: Catherine Clement, Caroline Collier, Nicholas Serota, Nicole Simões da Silva. María Ballesteros (Decograf), Laura Lozano, Angelines del Puerto, and Ana Tabuenca (SIT);
Transportes Fink S/A, Luiz Carlos Santorio, Delmiro Méndez e hijo S.A., Alberto Freijo, Rubén
FRANCE: Centre Pompidou, Paris: Claire Both, Sennen Codjo, Brigitte Leal, Alfred Diez Riojano (Unipsa).
Pacquement; Galerie Denise René: Maud Catté, Franck Marlot, Denise René.

GERMANY: Bauhaus-Archiv: Randy Kaufman; Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum: Katharina

Kemper.

SPAIN: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville: Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes, Isabel
Pichardo, Rafael Rodríguez Obando; Galería Freijo Fine Art, Madrid: Angustias Freijo; Galería
Guillermo de Osma, Madrid: José Ignacio Abeijón, Guillermo de Osma; Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid: Manuel Borja-Villel, Soledad de Pablo, Rosario Peiró, Carmen
Sánchez García, Miguel Valle-Inclán Alsina; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: Baroness
Thyssen Bornemisza, Sara Martínez-Sarandeses, Purificación Ripio, Guillermo Solana; Luis
Benshimol; Eugenio Fontaneda; Amaya Gergoff Bengoa; Fernando Cordero de la Lastra; Juan
Antonio González Fuentes; José María Lafuente; Ramón Molina Lladó; Jorge Virgili.

SWITZERLAND: Max, Binia + Jakob Bill Stiftung: Jakob Bill; Kunstmuseum Basel: Maria
Theresa Brunner; Kunstmuseum Winterthur: Ludmilla Sala, Dieter Schwarz; Richard Paul Lohse
Stiftung: Johanna Lohse-James; Marianne Gerber.

UNITED STATES: CIFO: Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Diego G. Machado, Patricia García-Vélez;

Fundación Cisneros: Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Ileen Kohn; MoMA: Barry Bergdoll, Connie
Butler, Paul Galloway, Cora Rosevear, Jennifer Schauer; The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation:
Brenda Danilowitz; Oliver Barker; Geaninne Guimaraes; Rafael DiazCasas.

VENEZUELA: Juan Ledezma; Fundación Villanueva: Paulina Villanueva, Cecilia Castrillo.

Fundación Juan March

Lenders, Public Institutions
COUNTRY CITY MUSEUMS/INSTITUTIONS/COLLECTIONS WORKS
ARGENTINA Buenos Aires Malba - Colección Costantini CAT. 33, 35, 39, 46
Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori CAT. 40, 43, 53, 60
BRAZIL Río de Janeiro Instituto Moreira Salles CAT. 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
118, 119
São Paulo Dan Galeria CAT. 83
Fundação José e Paulina Nemirovsky CAT. 125, 128
MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand CAT. 124, 155
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo CAT. 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 102, 103, 131, 168
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo CAT. 156, 157, 158
CUBA Havana Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes CAT. 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222, 223, 224, 229, 230, 232,
233, 234, 235, 237, 238
ENGLAND London Tate CAT. 84, 243
FRANCE Paris Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne /
Centre de création industrielle CAT. 2, 4, 174
Galerie Denise René CAT. 178, 180, 187, 195, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269,
270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276
SPAIN Madrid Fundación Juan March CAT. 145, 245, 247, 248
Galería Guillermo de Osma CAT. 57
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía CAT. 6, 7, 9, 10, 55, 126
Seville Junta de Andalucía - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo CAT. 62
UNITED STATES New York, NY The Museum of Modern Art CAT. 3, 88, 169, 220, 221, 242

Private Collections
Augusto de Campos: CATS. 149, 150
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: CAT. 1
Collection Freijo, courtesy Freijo Fine Art, Galería de arte y proyectos: CATS. 23, 24, 25
Courtesy Freijo Fine Art, Galería de arte y proyectos: CATS. 26, 27, 251
Ella Fontanals-Cisneros: CATS. 44, 49, 85, 96, 110, 111, 133, 154, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 225, 226, 227, 241, 244
Fundación Leo Matiz: CATS. 197, 198, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210
Fundación Privada Allegro: CATS. 5, 47, 51, 61, 135, 137, 138, 139, 143, 159, 164, 167, 170, 172, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192
Glaucia and Peter Cohn, São Paulo: CAT. 136
Jorge Virgili, Madrid: CATS. 28, 29, 30
José María Lafuente: CATS. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 151, 152, 249, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 263, 264
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros: CATS. 8, 34, 86, 121, 122, 127, 129, 130, 132, 134, 140, 141, 142, 160, 163, 165, 166, 171, 173, 175, 193, 194
Rafael DiazCasas: CAT. 236
Raquel Villa, Havana: CATS. 231, 239
Raul Naon: CATS. 41, 50, 52, 59, 63, 68, 73, 76
Rose Maluf: CAT. 87
Rose and Alfredo Setubal: CAT. 123
Other private collections: CATS. 22, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 42, 45, 48, 54, 56, 58, 70, 89, 90, 120, 144, 146, 147, 148, 153, 161, 162, 228, 240, 246

Fundación Juan March

contents

foreword Another America  9

essays
Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934–1973): Round Trip Voyages. Osbel Suárez 15
Irregular Frame/Shaped Canvas: Anticipations, Inheritances, Borrowings. César Paternosto 33
Magazines, Exhibitions, and Biennials: Snapshots of Abstraction in Argentina and Brazil. María Amalia García 43
From Construction to Deconstruction. Ferreira Gullar 49
Notes on the Constructivist Art Scene in Venezuela, 1950–1973. Luis Pérez-Oramas 53
Invention and Reinvention: The Transatlantic Dialogue in Geometric Abstraction. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro  67

works on display 77

chronology
Notes for a Chronology of Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1930–1973). Osbel Suárez 346

artists’ biographies Michael Nungesser  359

documents Essays, Manifestos, Letters (1930–1963)

Uruguay Vouloir construire / The Will to Construct, Paris (1930). Joaquín Torres-García  406
Manifesto 1, Montevideo (1934). Joaquín Torres-García 408
Manifesto 2, Montevideo (1938). Joaquín Torres-García 410
Manifesto 3, Montevideo (1940). Joaquín Torres-García 414
La Escuela del Sur (1935). Joaquín Torres-García 416
Argentina The Frame: A Problem in Contemporary Art (1944). Rhod Rothfuss 420
On Concrete Art (1946). Edgar M. Bayley 422
White Manifesto (1946). Lucio Fontana and students 423
Madí Manifesto, Buenos Aires (1946). Gyula Kosice 426
Inventionist Manifesto, Buenos Aires (1946). Edgar Bayley, Antonio Caraduje, Simón Contreras, Manuel O. Espinosa,
Claudio Girola, Alfredo Hlito, Enio lommi, Obdulio Landi, Rafael Lozza, Raúl Lozza, R. V. D. Lozza, Tomás Maldonado,
Alberto Molenberg, Primaldo Mónaco, Oscar Núñez, Lidy Prati, Jorge Souza, Matilde Werbin 428
Perceptist Manifesto, Buenos Aires (1949). Raúl Lozza 430
Regarding the Frame (1950). Rhod Rothfuss 432
Concrete Art and Meaning (1953). Alfredo Hlito 433
6

Fundación Juan March

Brazil Ruptura Manifesto, São Paulo (1952). Lothar Charoux, Waldemar Cordeiro, Geraldo de Barros, Luiz Sacilotto and others 436
Concrete Poetry (1955). Augusto de Campos 438
Concrete Art: Object and Objective (1956). Décio Pignatari 440
Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry (1958). Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos 441
Neo-Concrete Manifesto, Rio de Janeiro (1959). Ferreira Gullar 442
The Death of the Plane (1960). Lygia Clark 444
Venezuela Los Disidentes Manifesto, Paris (1950). Los Disidentes 446
On Painting Today (1950). Narciso Debourg 447
Letter to Carlos Raúl Villanueva, Paris (1953). Jesús Rafael Soto 448
Integration of the Arts (1957). Carlos Raúl Villanueva 449
“Colorhythms” (1957). Alejandro Otero 452
On Some Statements of Dissent by the Painter Alejandro Otero Rodríguez (1957). Miguel Otero Silva 452
Letter to Miguel Otero Silva (1957). Alejandro Otero 454
The “Los Disidentes” Parenthesis (1988). Alejandro Otero 455
Cover sketch and text for the Calder´s catalogue exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (1955). Alexander Calder 456
Letter to Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1958). Richard Neutra 457
Letter to Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1959). Alexander Calder 458
Letter to Carlos Raúl Villanueva (1963). Alejandro Otero 458
Cuba A Conversation with Our Abstract Painters (1958). Juan Marinello 462
Letters (1949–1958). Sandu Darie-Gyula Kosice  465
Lines, Rays and a Stingray on L. Martínez Pedro’s Lined Paper. José Lezama Lima 476

catalogue of works on display  478

bibliography  Michael Nungesser, Inés d’Ors Lois 484

credits 
 498

Fundación Juan March

Fundación Juan March
Another America
foreword

For the third time in three years, the Fundación Juan as expressions of Colombian and Mexican abstract art
March devotes an exhibition to modern and contempo- to the narrative of the project. Painting, sculpture, pho-
rary art in Latin America. Cold America: Geometric Ab- tography, and architecture are represented through the
straction in Latin America (1934–1973) follows in the nearly three hundred pieces on display, some never be-
footsteps of the show dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral and fore viewed outside their country of origin. The exhibi-
Brazil (Madrid, 2009) and the first retrospective of Ven- tion brings together a total of sixty-four artists from the
ezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez held in Spain (Cuenca and above-mentioned countries and also features artworks
Palma, between 2008 and 2009). by Germán Cueto (Mexico) and Leo Matiz (Colombia).
The present exhibition sets out to chart the complex Showcased too is the work of several European artists
and fragmented path of geometric abstraction in Latin who paved the way for abstraction, geometric art, and
America so as to reveal the way in which it renovated the architectural and geometric applications of both
and also differed from the constructions and inventions styles: Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Victor Vasare-
produced by European geometric abstraction. The result ly, Max Bill, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Traveling
is a map—of which the English and Spanish editions of through the countries represented in the exhibition,
this catalogue form part—that shows how practices that these artists left a mark thanks to both their art and skill,
originated in the Old World informed abstract art in Latin inspiring a number of Latin-American artists, some of
America, but were also modified, reinvented, or even whom lived in Europe, and in Paris in particular, from the
overcome by the pioneers of geometric abstraction in 1950s onwards.
Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba, and by The Fundación Juan March has organized the exhibi-
prominent artists in Mexico and Colombia. tion with guest curator Osbel Suárez. As evidenced in
The works on display were loaned by private collec- his essay and chronological notes, from the early stages
tions and museums in Europe, the United States, and of the project Suárez suggested a specific time frame
Latin America, in what represents the largest effort to defined by the dates in which two artists returned to
date to bring together select pieces from renowned col- America from Europe: 1934, the year when Joaquín Tor-
lections in order to offer an overview of the various ten- res-García settled permanently in Montevideo following
dencies that made up Latin American abstraction. From his European (and North American) tour, and 1973, when
the outset, this project was driven by the idea of provid- Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto returned to his na-
ing the European audience with the first panoramic view tive city of Ciudad Bolívar to attend the opening of the
of those trends—a presentation which, despite not being museum that carries his name.
exhaustive, is indeed detailed and rigorous. This goal is as Together with Osbel Suárez, a number of renowned
ambitious as it is necessary: in effect, until now, geomet- artists and experts on Latin-American art have collabo-
ric abstraction in Latin America had only been treated as rated on the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.
a chapter in exhibitions that focused on the more general Contributions include Ferreira Gullar’s essay on the dia-
aspects of Latin-American art. In other cases, projects of lectics between concrete an neo-concrete Brazilian art-
this nature resulted in excellent shows that were, howev- ists and César Paternosto’s account of the Madí decon-
er, restricted to outstanding private collections. Held for struction of the frame, María Amalia García’s distinctive
the most part in museums in North and South America, approach to the Brazilian and Argentine art scene and
these exhibitions typically concentrated on South Ameri- Luis Pérez-Oramas’s to Venezuelan constructivism, and
can geometric abstraction and the representative cases Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro’s study of the similarities and dif-
of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, which, ferences between abstract art on both sides of the At-
nonetheless, exclude other countries. lantic. This collection of essays adds to the narrative of
Cold America: Geometric Abstraction in Latin Ameri- the exhibition by presenting an impressive body of tex-
ca (1934–1973) offers a specific yet overarching view of tual evidence. The catalogue is completed with a total of
abstraction in Latin America, incorporating Cuban as well sixty-four up-to-date biographies of the artists featured

Fundación Juan March

 “. . . it is important
to clarify that, in
the language of art,
these so-called geo-
metric forms lose the
objective character
of geometry in order
to become vehicles
for the imagination.”
Neo-concrete
Manifesto, 1959 “. . . we did not
come to Paris to
study diplomacy,
in the show, as well as an illustrated chronology and a During this period, two concrete art groups emerged nor to acquire some
selection of historical documents, some never before in two cities as different from one another as Rio de Ja- “culture” for our own
published. Printed here almost in their entirety, the neiro and São Paulo. As the 1960s approached, abstract personal interests.
importance of these documents—mainly texts, mani- “. . . we can and geometric painting produced by artists in Rio de Ja- We came to
festoes, and letters—cannot be understated, as they accomplish it neiro acquired a warm, organic, “sensível” quality. • confront problems,
are pivotal in understanding geometric abstraction as all . . . and not While living in Paris, Venezuelan artists Alejandro to struggle with
a plural phenomenon that took place in Latin America change what is our Otero, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Carlos Cruz-Diez evolved them, to learn to
between the 1930s and 1960s. Published in both Eng- own for what is towards abstract art in the 1950s. Meanwhile, in Cuba, call things by their
lish and Spanish, these documents offer a compre- foreign (which is geometric abstraction—even less popular than the ab- name.”
hensive selection of texts that is not only useful but in an unpardonable stract trends of other countries and soon affected by the
Los Disidentes
many cases essential for a complete overview of the snobbishness), but, triumph of the Revolution—was practiced by the interna- Manifesto, 1950
activities carried out over the course of four decades in on the contrary, tionally renowned artist Sandu Darie, a central figure of
five different countries by a number of artists featured make what is foreign the movement, and by two women: Loló Soldevilla and
in the exhibition, as well as theorists, poets, art critics, a thing of our own.” Carmen Herrera. •
and academics. Joaquín Torres-García,
The chronological scope of the exhibition encom-
Executed between the dates that mark the begin- 1935 passes the work of several painters and sculptors, as
ning and end of the exhibition, the artworks (and docu- well as—perhaps less well-known—photographers and “It is useful to recall
ments) on display draw a chronological and geographi- architects. From the start, this project has been intent . . . that, just as
cal line that also tells a story of artistic and intellectual on giving abstract photography a prominent place within lions should not be
endeavor, as fascinating as it is unknown. In effect, a the show and has thus included works by, among oth- in zoos, paintings
new artistic language was invented in Central and South ers, Gaspar Gasparian, Leo Matiz, José Yalenti, Marcel and sculptures
America over the course of four decades. And while it Gautherot, and Haruo Ohara. Architecture is also well should not be shut
contained references to abstract and concrete art, con- represented in the show. As a means to accomplish away in museums.
“A painting should
structivism, neo-plasticism, or even suprematism, this the “integration of the arts” (a proposal put forward by the natural
be something that
new style eventually transcended European trends and Carlos Raúl Villanueva that recalls the postulates of Le environment of
begins and ends
at the same time imbued them with a personal flavor. • Corbusier), unparalleled architectural projects were con- wild animals is the
in itself. Without
Using words that apply to most of the artists includ- ceived and realized in Latin America: Niemeyer’s Brasília, jungle. the natural
interruption.”
ed in the exhibition, in 1988, Venezuelan artist Alejandro Rhod Rothfuss, 1944 Mies van der Rohe’s building designs for Cuba, or Villan- environments for
Otero described what he referred to as “the European ueva’s University City of Caracas, a project that attracted works of art are
period”: “I had to emphasize our responsibility as men a number of geometric abstract artists. • squares, gardens,
of other latitudes by forcing them to include our par- The interface between European and American geo- public buildings,
ticularities: we represent the Western hemisphere in “To subvert the until metric abstraction sets the stage for the exhibition. In factories, airports:
its unity and multiplicity. We were on the brink of two now preponderant the early twentieth century, European abstraction, or, us- all the places where
worlds, one that was coming to an end, fighting to sur- values of expression, ing an expression coined by Wilhelm Worringer, the “ab- man perceives man
vive, and a second that embodied new possibilities.” representation, and stract urgency” (Abstraktionsdrang) felt among European as a partner, as an
The narrative of this exhibition begins in Uruguay, magic . . . To cause artists awoke them from a spell that had driven them to associate . . .”
Joaquín Torres-García’s homeland, with the artist’s re- a great “madic” empathy and expressionism. Abstract art is ultimately Carlos Raúl Villanueva,
lentless commitment to a constructivist style of art. • regarded as a tendency that withdrew from representa- 1957
commotion affecting
It continues with proposals put forward by artists reality . . . To create tion and naturalism, producing elemental, independent
such as Rhod Rothfuss and Carmelo Arden Quin, who, a spirit that is artworks based on objectivity and geometry. •
in a daring gesture, attempted to break away from mathematic, cold, Abstraction requires distance from immediate,
the frame-window and vigorously supported the dis- dynamic, cerebral, sensorial, and physical stimuli as well as from our ma-
junction between painting and the natural world. This dialectic.” terial surroundings. If it were possible to measure the
phase is followed by the Madí group’s singular take on Madí Movement, 1946 temperature of the distance associated with objec-
constructivism and geometric abstraction, leading to tivity, we would find it is probably far from high tem-
what is known as perceptism and inventionism. • peratures and closer to the low degrees of reflection,

10

Fundación Juan March

 where purely natural and specific experience rises to nent place within the show, and incorporating Cuba, for
the level of objectivity. • the first time, to the historical account of Latin-American
Such is the meaning of the metonym used in the abstraction. Nevertheless, perhaps the most distinctive
title Cold America: Geometric Abstraction in Latin Amer- feature of the exhibition lies in its aspiration to present
ica (1934–1973). At last, in this case the part that repre- an overview of Latin-American abstract tendencies, a
sents the whole is Latin America and refers to a concept narrative to which both private and public collections
that differs from the usual stereotype: it does not point have contributed. For this we thank the three private col-
to a hasty and clichéd identification of the continent “. . . the old is . . . all lections that have worked more closely on the project.
with the intense heat of spontaneity, or to an associa- the varieties and In addition to their generosity in loaning the pieces, they
tion with the notion of the indigenous and with that of hybridizations of have graciously accepted to let the historical and con-
the tropics and the Caribbean. In spite of obvious dif- naturalism . . .” ceptual nature of the show prevail over the presence of
ferences between the artists—due to generation gaps Ruptura Manifesto, 1952 specific artworks of their collections.
and the personal and historic circumstances that deter- The main aim of the exhibition—that of present-
mined their work as well as the styles that prevailed in ing a comprehensive, orderly, and systematic account
each country—, the works on view prove Latin America of geometric abstraction in Latin America—implies a
can in fact be measured in terms of objectivity. This was certain lack of familiarity. Unawareness of this subject,
a geometrical, constructivist, and elemental America though unaccounted for, comes as no surprise. In a let-
that moved between the rational and the “sensível,” ter addressed to the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva in
gravitating towards modern theories rather than local “. . . We practice a 1963, artist Alejandro Otero expressed his views on two
color. In short, an America that gave rise to a fascinating joyous technique. exhibitions of Latin-American art held in Europe: “. . . a
and surprising type of abstract art. • Only exhausted complete panorama of our reality seen through visual
The works on display become part of a poetic narra- techniques nourish images . . . has seemed to me to be very necessary and
tive of geometry and rationality composed of assembled themselves on sa- useful for when the first exhibition of Venezuelan paint-
and essential elements. These forms of art led to new dness, resentment, ing is held in Europe. The reason is obvious: the lack of
and extremely rich variations of style and, by the late and secrets . . . To a information about what we are—from the point of view
1960s, they had either evolved or co-existed with other precise aesthetics, of the cultural orbit within which we are inscribed (which
“. . . what is ours discourses and practices concerned with organic and a precise techni- is none other than Western culture)—leads us to be
in particular is the sensorial qualities or political and conceptual ideas. Al- que. The aesthetic viewed as hailing from exotic lands from which they ex-
absolute value we ready in 1946, Argentine artist Kosice referred to these function versus pect to be surprised by some type of originality or other.
place in the form of tendencies as “intuitionist movements” that, in his own ‘good taste’. The Their disappointment is great when they find that our
something, inde- words, had conquered: “Hence the triumph (despite all white function.” expressive language is the same as the Europeans’ and
pendently of what the unfavorable conditions) of instinctive impulses over it is not strange that they should take us for snobs, or at
Inventionist Manifesto,
it might represent. thought; of intuition over consciousness; of the revelation 1946 best, for imitators . . . Once this mistake has been recti-
The same holds true of the subconscious over cold analysis, the rigorous study fied nobody will be able to deny that we have our own
for structure or cons- and examination on the part of the creator of the laws of accent. We can at least aspire to this, and this exhibition
truction: it ceases to the object to be constructed; of symbolism, hermetism, tends to highlight that notion.”
be a mere scaffold and magic over reality; of metaphysics over experience.” We, too, hope to highlight this accent and, as Gyula
on which to arrange Naturally, a project of this scope would not have been Kosice wrote to Sandu Darie in 1955, trust that “. . . the
things in a certain possible without the effort, collaboration, and assistance time will come for the critical judgment about the aes-
order; it takes their of a number of individuals, institutions, and the artists thetic convergence of a particular group of artists, who,
place and becomes who took part in the exhibition, with whom we have across many latitudes, define a style. In a universality.”
the work itself.” shared many memorable moments. We wish to use
these pages to warmly thank them for their dedication.
Joaquín Torres-García,
1931 The project has concentrated on several different as-
pects: presenting an extensive yet consistent selection Fundación Juan March
of works, giving architecture and photography a promi- Madrid, January 2011

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12

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 essays

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14

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 Geometric
Abstraction in
Latin America
(1934–1973):
Round Trip
Voyages
OSBEL SUÁREZ

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M
odernity in Latin America should not be under- Buenos Aires. Forestier drew up a Master Plan for the Cuban capital, which led, how-
stood as a uniform phenomenon but rather as ever, to the completion of only a few works resulting in a fragmentary stage design of
a disparate and erratic process with periods of urban monuments. Nonetheless, it allowed for the preservation of the historic center
contraction and expansion which preclude sim- of the city, the integration of the most emblematic buildings into the urban fabric,
plistic, unequivocal analyses. Indeed, rather and the creation of various green spaces within the metropolitan center. By the same
than modernity in the singular, in the case of token, though they lie outside the scope of this essay, Le Corbusier’s successive trips
Latin America one might suitably speak of mul- to Latin America, which represented an important source of inspiration for the Swiss
tiple modernities, whose temporal divergenc- architect and painter [fig. 1] , should be evaluated in terms of modernity’s multifarious
es and gaps are so pronounced that they have entry into Latin America. The Curutchet House, designed by Le Corbusier and built
virtually become a trait of our modern identity. in La Plata, Argentina, between 1949 and 1953,2 includes an important work by Enio
In the first decades of the twentieth cen- Iommi in white cement, inspired by the Möbius strip [fig. 2] , the original sketches for
tury, in cities like Buenos Aires, Havana, or São which appear in the present exhibition. Le Corbusier also sketched and wrote about
Paulo, this heterogeneous, contradictory, and Rio de Janeiro and, together with Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, devised a
eminently urban modernity gave birth to an intense cultural production that sought its regulatory plan for Bogotá and worked in Montevideo.
foundations in that which was local and indigenous as a means to discover the univer- Once the initial phase of modernity in Latin America had passed—a period in
sal.1 It is no coincidence that these countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, which artists searched among the local in order to find its universal dimensions, when
Cuba, Mexico) became the destination for significant numbers of European émigrés the indigenous or rural spheres (and later the urban) were viewed as necessary to dif-
whose presence in America would have major historical and cultural repercussions in ferentiate ourselves from the rest of the world as the bearers of a unique history and
the life of these countries. Nor is it fortuitous that the cities most closely tied to moder- a unique way of narrating and interpreting the past—Paris nevertheless continued to
nity lie on or relatively near the Atlantic seaboard, in regions that were most favorable be the place of “enlightenment” to which one perforce traveled and from which one
for commercial and cultural exchanges with Europe. Another aspect that characterized returned (whether permanently or temporarily) with experience and knowledge that
Latin America’s burgeoning modernity was its restriction basically to the capital cities; later would bear fruit in the New World.
these countries’ inland territories, in contrast, continued stubbornly to cling to cultural Two return journeys—one definitive, the other transitory—provide the chronologi-
modes and practices deriving from their postcolonial status. cal boundaries for the present exploration of the twists and turns of geometric ab-
The moment at which the debate around geometric abstraction developed in Latin straction in Latin America. The first is Joaquín Torres-García’s return to Uruguay in 1934
America coincided precisely with a period of transatlantic voyages, back and forth [fig. 3] . The second is Jesús Rafael Soto’s return in 1973 to his birthplace, Ciudad
between America and Europe, by the protagonists of this story, exchanges that would Bolívar (Venezuela), to inaugurate the first stage in the construction of the museum
decisively influence their future artistic practices. At the time, gazing towards Europe that bears his name, designed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva. The idea of creating a mu-
was de rigueur, constituting another feature that identified us as “modern.” Like the seum in Ciudad Bolívar was not new; Soto had announced such a plan in 1960 when
regions in Latin America in which modernity was championed, however, Europe like- he received the National Prize in the Plastic Arts, though the project would not be
wise offered its own specific space for the modern, and the majority of the Latin undertaken until thirteen years later.
American intelligentsia turned toward that epicenter of the avant-garde: Paris, and Significantly, these two return journeys originated in Paris, though Joaquín Torres-
none other, was the city to which all roads led, the city that received and in turn irradi- García left Europe via the southern Spanish port of Cádiz shortly after his brief and
ated outward a cultural dialogue whose repercussions were greater than that which bewildering experience in Madrid. The Uruguayan artist’s return marks the beginning
any other European city could offer. Madrid, capital of the former empire that had of our tale, though it is true that for Mario Gradowczyk, abstraction in Latin America
colonized the Americas and the standard-bearer of the common language that identi- began a year earlier, with Juan del Prete’s exhibition in Buenos Aires.3
fies us—with the notable exception of Brazil, of course—likewise could not resist the
cultural tug from the French capital.
Members of the intellectual classes and of the enlightened bourgeoisie therefore I. A Return that Marks the Beginning
embarked upon their pilgrimages to Paris, forging connections that in time produced
definitive changes even in the architectural profile of Latin American cities. During the Torres-García’s return to Montevideo carried a symbolic charge that can be charac-
presidency of Gerardo Machado, for instance, the urban makeovers of Jean-Claude terized (beyond the strictly pictorial) as an earnest desire to adopt modernity as his
Nicolas Forestier arrived in Havana. This architect, town planner, and landscape ar- credo. There is in addition a certain mystical element to this return, as evinced by the
chitect, a disciple of Georges Eugène Haussmann, had already carried out work in painter’s studies on religion, anthropology, and pre-Columbian cultures. After more

PAGES 14–15:
Sandu Darie
Detail of Untitled, 1950s
Mixed media on card
33.9 x 61 cm (13 ¼ x 24 in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes de la Habana

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 Fig.1. Le Corbusier, sketch
with aerial view of the bay
than forty years outside his country, the consequences of his return might have been of Rio de Janeiro, with
uncertain, but his methodicalness and the enthusiasm with which he took up his buildings and highways over
work anew in Uruguay allowed him to complete his autobiography (which, narrated the port. Chalk and pastel on
in the third person, concludes with his arrival in Montevideo), paint some of his most paper, 73.1 x 76.7 cm
emblematic works, write several books and manifestos, found the Asociación de Arte (28 ¾ x 30 ¼ in.). Collection
Constructivo, and publish his review, Círculo y Cuadrado (a continuation of the Paris- Fondation Le Corbusier Paris
based constructivist journal Cercle et Carré—Circle and Square).
The inaugural issue of Círculo y Cuadrado, the mouthpiece for the Asociación de
Arte Constructivo that appeared in 1936,4 features an article by Torres-García in which
the author explains the origin of the journal. According to the painter, he had the op-
portunity to visit an exhibition of works by Salvador Dalí at Galerie Goemans on rue
de Seine at the end of 1930. The exhibition produced such a negative reaction in him
that that same afternoon, in a conversation with Theo van Doesburg, he remarked on
the need to do something diametrically opposed. “In transplanting [this effort] to our
milieu here,” Torres-García explains in reference to the creation of the magazine in
Montevideo, “it is immediately apparent that it cannot have the same objective it had
then in Paris. Yet its purpose is equally combative insofar as we cannot accept natural-
istic, representational art, believing it to be today an error; [the review] must serve to FIG. 2. Enio Iommi, sketches
bring to light a structured art, whether it be from here or from abroad.”5 of a sculpture for the
The last part of Torres-García’s text outlines his recognition of a difference that Curutchet House in La Plata,
allows him to reconcile his apprenticeship in Europe with the specificity of what is Argentina. Collection Jorge
indigenous to the Americas: Virgili, Madrid

Something else remains to be explained. We do not forget that we are in the

southern hemisphere. We have inverted the map, and the tip of America points
toward our North Star, our goal. While these lands once had their own indigenous
tradition, today they find themselves in a new reality about which we cannot and
should not be indifferent. Furthermore, if we do not wish to sever our ties with
Europe (for it is there that we learned, and we have much to learn), neither do
we wish to do so with Central and South America. As long as our art fails to of-
fer, within its universality, a character of its own, we will not have achieved that
rootedness in the land that will allow our art to live with and like everything else.6

It is no coincidence, therefore, that a series of lectures on pre-Columbian art by

the ethnographer Rafael Fosalba and an exhibition of Andean textiles at the Ateneo
in Montevideo should have served as a pretext for the second article of the first
issue, likewise signed by Torres-García. I am almost certain that the painter César
Paternosto refers to this text in his seminal essay, Abstracción: El paradigma amer-
indio (Abstraction: The Amerindian Paradigm), required reading for an understanding
of “the emergence of an abstract art that flourished thanks to the symbolic-structural
analogies of the aboriginal arts, that is, of the only original arts in the hemisphere:
abstraction, in fact, that can be identified as of America” (Paternosto’s italics).7
In August 1936, the second issue of Círculo y Cuadrado appeared, now welcom-
ing annual subscriptions in America, Spain, and the rest of Europe. Most noteworthy

Fig. 3. Joaquín Torres-García,

Self-portrait, 1920. Oil on
cardboard, 42 x 27.5 cm
(16 ½ x 10 ¾ in.). Fundación
Francisco Godia, Barcelona

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Fundación Juan March

in this issue are a brief text by Piet Mondrian titled “Como se generó el neoplasti- The present exhibition adopts Mario H. Gradowczyck’s recommendation in one of
cismo” (How Neo-Plasticism Came into Being) and another by Torres-García in which his texts that Lisa’s work should be exhibited “alongside the members of the abstract
he greets international abstraction as a “return to the truth.” In February 1937 the third avant-garde of the ’40s and ’50s” in order to analyze the solitary work of a self-mar-
issue was published, with a reproduction on its cover of one of Torres-García’s mad- ginalized intellectual in the context of a larger artistic collectivity.9
eras (wood sculptures), together with a text that is worth quoting here: Esteban Lisa’s “territory” excluded the public arena, and he created a path—a uni-
verse?—that alternated between his work as a librarian and postman and his classes
The great step ahead taken by the modern plastic arts is precisely this: form, even as a drawing instructor. Beginning in 1935, Lisa painted figures from a limited geo-
when its origin might be found in reality, no longer seeks to be representational, metric repertory, in bright colors whose intensity diminishes toward the edges of the
but form in and of itself and color, independent of anything else. In this way, a new painted surface. He always painted these on cardboard, in small formats and occa-
order in the plastic arts has been created, whose purest expression is so-called sionally working on both sides of the support. In this period, one perceives a certain
abstract art. Abstraction in our language does not mean non-figurative but rather, rhythmic sequencing and emotive use of color that distances Lisa from the approach
more accurately, synthesis. For this reason, in its absolute sense, form (apart from adopted soon afterwards by the Argentine concrete artists. Given that the dogma
representation) can find a deeply human expression. of concrete art demanded the elimination of any sign of lyricism, Lisa’s oeuvre can
be situated in that “interregnum” where artists seized upon geometric form, which
Nearly identical in format to its French predecessor, Círculo y Cuadrado emblem- nevertheless was always characterized by a certain degree of primitivist nostalgia,
atically respected the typography and dimensions of Cercle et Carré. Indeed, the re- making Lisa’s paintings a perfect antecedent to the geometric rigor that would later
view was presented as the “second series” of the journal published in Paris five years characterize the poetics of artists in the Southern Cone, before they began to delve
earlier and in this light it must be viewed as a point of contact between Uruguayan into the principles of the Swiss artist and designer Max Bill.
and European artists. For the first time in any publication in Latin America, the journal The peculiarity and contradictions of Arturo magazine themselves indicate the
provided the focal point for an open, sustained debate around abstract art. This debate timid path towards geometric abstraction in Argentina. Neither Arturo nor the Madí
(and the review’s link to the French publication) was facilitated by the inclusion of texts movement should be especially associated with geometric abstraction. The commit-
in both Spanish and French. ment of the magazine and the Madí artists responded more to a perceived need for
Even so, Torres-García’s thinking had evolved significantly since the first issue of invention in the broad sense, rather than to any particular artistic tendency, although
Cercle et Carré, which appeared in Paris in March 1930 and included his now classic the majority of the participants in these two projects ended up adopting approaches
essay, “Vouloir construire,” in which he celebrated the synthesizing spirit of the art- to representation in their works that relied on the canon of geometric forms.
ist and the absolute value of form. During those years in Paris, Torres-García united Gyula Kosice, in his recently-published autobiography [fig. 5], explains the origin
two aims that stood practically in opposition to each other, with scant possibilities for of the name of the magazine:
reconciliation: abstraction and figuration. In the words of Cecilia de Torres, “by placing
symbols within a geometric structure, he could express a meaning lacking any narra- Searching in the dictionary for a word that might have something to do with “art,” I
tive. He called this style ‘constructive universalism.’”8 found by chance Arturo (i.e., Arcturus), which is the name of one of the most brilliant
The Uruguayan master’s poetics found a reorientation in his native country when he stars in the heavens, in the constellation Boötes. Its name derives from the Greek,
discovered in the motifs of Incan civilization the roots of Latin American identity [fig. Arktouros, from arktos (bear) and ouros (guardian). The resonance of that childhood
4] ; but that poetics grew diluted in the works of his many followers, who managed memory of the brilliant heavens which I saw for the first time when I was three, when
to pervert it to the extent that it came to be perceived as indigenista (i.e., promoting I crossed the Atlantic Ocean, surely lies behind that choice. Edgar Bayley enthusiasti-
indigenous American culture), something that had always been alien to Torres-García. cally supported that decision, as did Rod Rothfuss, and the group accepted the title.10

In any case, regardless of Kosice’s personal anecdote, that single issue of Arturo
II. Buenos Aires, or the Order of the Concrete betrays an earnest desire to break with the past and defend non-figurative art, mark-
ing a turning point toward geometry. The most innovative contributions to the journal
In the proto-history of geometric abstraction in Argentina, the beginnings of a new were Rothfuss’s theoretical text on the irregular frame and Tomás Maldonado’s wood-
path in representation is marked by the work of Juan del Prete and Esteban Lisa (who cuts on the cover, which could fall under the category of abstract expressionism and
remained outside the commercial mainstream), by the revolutionary contributions would seem almost to provide a counter-discourse to the ultimate aims of the pub-
of the Madí movement, and by the appearance of the single-issue magazine titled lication. Curiously, in 1944 (the year Arturo appeared in print), Maldonado illustrated
Arturo. Elías Piterbarg’s Tratado de amor, in which his drawings take on a markedly geometric

Fig. 4. Torres-García with his

family, Montevideo, 1942. From
left to right: Augusto, Olimpia,
Torres-García, Ifigenia, and
Manolita

Fig. 5. Front cover of

Kosice, Autobiografía. Buenos
Aires: Asunto Impreso
Ediciones, 2010

Fig. 6. Front cover of the review

Arturo Buenos Aires, 1944
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character that leaves no doubt about their possible classification. In 1948, together with in our country, but also from what we can regard as the orientation of international
Aldo Pellegrini and Enrique Pichón Rivière, Piterbarg edited the only two issues of the concrete art.” Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro makes a similar claim when, apropos of Madí’s
magazine Ciclo, for which he worked again with Maldonado, who was commissioned significance, he argues that it “represents the first truly avant-garde movement in the
to design the first issue. field of the visual arts in Argentina. And when I say avant-garde, I am referring to the
Arturo [fig. 6] , with its single run of barely five hundred copies, had scant reper- transgression of a particular model of artistic production, not to a style.”11
cussions in the local milieu, at least initially. According to Gyula Kosice, copies of the Madí was technically versatile, but its ideology and its energetic spirit are perhaps
review were distributed among bookstores on Avenida Corrientes and Avenida Santa more thought-provoking than what it actually produced in the plastic arts; it is to this
Fe in Buenos Aires and through the cultural missions of some American and European that its tremendous capacity to appeal to critics and academics to this day may be
embassies, when that continent was still bleeding from the Second World War. Arturo attributable. Since it offered a relatively open artistic space, we associate it with vital-
should be understood as a starting pistol’s shot, the beginning of a collective action ity, surprise, and amazement, and the desire in art and poetry to eschew descriptive
whose epicenter was Buenos Aires and that resolutely adopted a position against the representation; but it did not seek to impose a geometrically pure order.
figurative tradition—a foundational act from which later associations would emerge, There were many adversities that little by little wore down the Madí movement:
with platforms whose features were more in line with the postulates of concrete art. the partial dispersal of members of the group; the schism provoked by Carmelo Arden
It is not useful, however, to include the Madí movement within the category of Quin’s split with the movement; the disappearance of the group’s review, which had
concrete art in Argentina. Nelly Perazzo affirmed as much in 1983, in her essential served as a cohesive element for the movement (the Madí journal published seven
study, El arte concreto en la Argentina. Perazzo agrees with Kosice when she excludes issues, the last of which was a double-issue); the pointless, steady, and prolonged
Madí from her book, “because it is a completely unique phenomenon. Its explorations dispute between Kosice and Arden Quin; and the long visit to Paris undertaken by
in every field mix fantasy, inventiveness, and playfulness with characteristics that are Kosice, who was more focused at the time on promoting his own work.12 Thus, the
completely different from not only the work of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención exhibition organized by the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires in 1961 to

Fig. 7. Tomás Maldonado in

his studio on Calle Cerrito,
with the work Cuatro temas
circulares (Four Circular
Subjects), 1953

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Fundación Juan March

 commemorate the fifteen-year anniversary of the movement’s founding can be seen
not only as an homage to Madí but also as its obituary.
The most interesting and multifaceted creator and the person who contributed
the most lucid and committed ideas to the visual arts in Argentina in the first half
Fig. 8. Page 3 of the first of the twentieth century, definitively focusing the debate around concrete art, was
issue of Nueva visión (year Tomás Maldonado [fig. 7]. In 1945, the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención was cre-
1, no. 1, December 1951) ated in Buenos Aires, and the group delivered the obligatory founding manifesto
featuring an article on the as part of their first exhibition on March 18, 1946, at the Salón Peuser. Its mem-
architecture of Antonio bers were, among others, Alfredo Hlito, Lidy Prati, Manuel Espinosa, Enio Iommi,
Bonet the Lozza brothers, Alberto Molenberg, and Claudio Girola. Subsequently, Gregorio
Vardánega, Juan Melé, and Virgilio Villalba joined the association. Maldonado, whose
house had become a requisite meeting place for impassioned discussions about the
forms and content of modern art, was the indisputable leader and ideologue for the
group and its short-lived journal. Five months after the inaugural exhibition, in August
1946, the association’s magazine appeared, and in December of the same year, in
a more modest publication than the first issue, its second and last issue came out
under the title Boletín de la Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención. In this second issue,
the group clarified (if there were any doubts about the matter) that this movement
had nothing to do with Madí.
Maldonado and the other members of the association adopted the credo that the
“abstract” and “concrete” belonged to the aesthetic categories of Marxism, which
had surpassed the classical concept of “figuration.” One can thus comprehend the
ardent proclamations and manifestos that the group emitted against everything it
considered reactionary and bourgeois. The word “invention” is not gratuitous and is
tied to eminently social aspirations: concrete art would lead, they thought, to a trans-
formation of the world.
In the third issue of the review Contrapunto, in April 1945 (before the creation of
the association), in response to a question about the direction in which painting was
evolving, Maldonado replied:

I believe that painting is evolving toward the concrete, which has dialectically sur-
Fig. 9. Interview with Raúl mounted abstraction. Abstract art has been purified in a real, material sense, that
Lozza by the critic Abraham is to say, it has become CONCRETE ART. In this new stage in its development,
Haber in issue no. 7 of the the “abstract” tendency has completely divorced itself from any commitment to
journal Perceptismo idealist thought and tends toward an objective aesthetics, that is, an aesthetics
based on INVENTION rather than on copy or abstraction. Concrete art does not
abstract; it invents new realities.

In 1948, Maldonado traveled to Europe and met Max Bill, Bruno Munari, Gillo
Dorfles, Richard P. Lohse, and Georges Vantongerloo, among other artists connected
with the defunct Bauhaus and with concrete art. According to Maldonado, this trip
marked the end of the movement’s heroic phase when it was most audacious and ex-
perimental, and, I would add, it marked the beginning of the mature period of design,
the graphic arts, and typography in Argentina.

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 Upon his return to Buenos Aires, Maldonado turned especially towards design of the building, the original sketches for which likewise appear in the present exhibi-
and typography. He collaborated on the review Ciclo (Cycle), which appeared in only tion [see fig.2]. Finally, a brief note on page 43 announces Tomás Maldonado’s joining
two issues (November-December 1948 and March-April 1949) and served as editor for the faculty of the School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung) at Ulm, as professor
Nueva visión (New Vision), whose first issue appeared in December 1951, continuing of Visual Communications in the Department of Visual Creation.
through the beginning of 1957. Nueva visión represented the last of the major projects Following his appointment to the faculty of the college and his move to Switzerland,
Maldonado managed to undertake before leaving Argentina, unable to resist Max Maldonado directed the journal from Ulm. The seventh issue thus opens with an ex-
Bill’s urging him to join in the new project that was being forged in Ulm. tensive report on the Ulm School of Design signed by Max Bill, followed by a text by
Certain “deficiencies” in the design of the first issue of Nueva visión were im- Maldonado and a third by the Swiss-Bolivian concrete poet Eugen Gomringer, who at
mediately remedied by Maldonado in the subsequent issues. The cover photograph the time worked as Bill’s secretary. Maldonado’s text is titled “La educación social del
was eliminated, design was minimized, and only one flat color was used on the cover, creador en la Escuela Superior de Diseño” (The Social Education of the Artist in the
which changed with each issue. The first opens with a text about the Catalan architect Hochschule für Gestaltung), and in it, one might perceive clues to the future split be-
Antonio Bonet (in exile in Argentina since 1938), focusing on the spas he was design- tween Maldonado and Bill, one of the most notorious consequences of which was
ing in Uruguay [fig. 8]. The issue continues with a now classic text by Maldonado Bill’s resignation from the college in 1956, barely two years after the arrival of the
from his period before Ulm, “Actualidad y porvenir del arte concreto” (The Present Argentinian:13
and Future of Concrete Art). In this article written in the spirit of a manifesto, the
artist reviews terminology related to the “concrete” and settles accounts with crit- In certain specific cases, the difference between continuing a tradition and sur-
ics who view concrete art as elitist and contrary to art that is more socially relevant passing it, between going along with the past and turning against it, might not be
and “understandable.” The issue closes with another text by Maldonado, homage to completely clear. The Hochschule für Gestaltung is a good example. In one sense,
Vantongerloo on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. it continues in the spirit of Bauhaus; in another, it surpasses that tradition. It fol-
The second and third issues appeared in a double volume in January 1953. Of note lows Bauhaus to the degree that it aims to prolong an attitude regarding creative
in this volume is the text by Alfredo Hlito, Maldonado’s most faithful fellow-traveler at work that, thirty-five years ago, Bauhaus’s inaugural manifesto formulated for the
the time, “Significado y arte concreto” (Meaning and Concrete Art). The fourth issue first time; it surpasses Bauhaus insofar as that same attitude must now confront
reports on the text “Educación y creación” by Max Bill, which surveys the history radically different circumstances. The Bauhaus attitude indeed persists in the
of various schools of design, focusing on the Bauhaus and concluding with the Ulm Hochschule, but the nature of the new factors with which it must now engage
School of Design. Referring specifically to Ulm, Max Bill argues: have significantly altered its original sense. In other words, while it is true that the
attitude persists, it is no less true that its significance in the past can no longer be
The school aims to direct the enterprising spirit of young people, cultivating their the same. Furthermore, not all the points of view maintained by the pioneers of
sense of responsibility as members of society, so they work to solve important so- the former Bauhaus remain valid for our generation. At present we are living with
cial problems and engage in the forms of living in our technological era. Instruction problems that they, in their era, were ignorant of or could barely intuit. On the other
is based both on the study of concrete tasks taken from practice and on the in- hand, problems that were formerly considered fundamental have now lost their
dispensable teaching of theoretical issues … The school very freely juxtaposes relevance for us.
workshops, laboratories, and studies for collective work.
The eighth issue of the journal includes a report on Josef Albers’s pictorial work
This issue includes Walter Gropius’s speech on his seventieth birthday as well as and a text by Alfredo Hlito on space in painting. Most noteworthy in this issue is an
the essay “Problemas actuales de la comunicación” (Current Problems in Communi- extensive study on two works from Richard Neutra’s period in North America. The
cation) by Maldonado. dossier on the architect also includes his lecture given at the Ninth Pan-American
The fifth issue appeared in 1954, with an advertisement for the book Max Bill, also Congress of Architects, which took place in Caracas in 1955.
by Maldonado. To mark the exhibition of the Artistas Modernos de la Argentina group The ninth and last issue appeared after a delay, in 1957, and makes no reference
at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, this issue includes reproductions of to the disappearance of a journal that had become a paradigm for modern design and
various works by Alfredo Hlito, among them Formas y líneas en el plano (Forms and architecture.
Lines on the Plane), also in the present exhibition [cat. 56]. The issue also records the Interestingly, if we exclude its attention to architecture in Argentina, Nueva visión
Acquisition Prize won by Hlito at the Second São Paulo Biennial. The sixth issue opens hardly considered the significant changes that were taking place in the field of archi-
with a lengthy article on the Curutchet House, designed in Argentina by Le Corbusier, tecture in Latin America, with the sole exception of occasional rare reviews, such as
and includes a photograph of the sculpture created by Enio Iommi for the ground floor the article on the construction of the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro.

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 In the successive chapters of our tale of Argentina in the 1940s, with its schisms earliest installments, an enormous impact that placed the country—and in particular
and configurations of new spaces for artistic experimentation, one movement has a the city that hosted the exhibition—in a central position on the international artistic
very particular profile: perceptismo, whose founder and principal theoretician was Raúl circuit, making the Bienal de São Paulo the most important such event outside the
Lozza. Lozza’s earliest career focused on drawings of a political nature and later turned centers of cultural hegemony. It also played a determining role in geometric ab-
toward surrealism. He was a member of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención, straction’s subsequent dissemination, exhibition, and organization as a movement in
which he left in order to dedicate himself completely to his perceptist doctrine, which Brazil and made clear that country’s connections with other Latin American nations
he expounded in a manifesto. The perceptist manifesto is, like the other manifestos through their successive contributions to the exhibition.
from the period, a war cry, a “gesture” that defends its unique stance with a certain The prizes awarded at the first Bienal suggest the weight of geometric-abstract cur-
radicalism—the need in the end for words to illustrate the purpose of painting, as if rents throughout the continent. Max Bill (whose work had caused a great impression
painting itself were not wholly autonomous and capable of standing on its own. when it was exhibited a year before in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo) won the first
The movement managed to publish seven issues of its official organ, Perceptismo, prize in International Sculpture for his Dreiteilige Einheit (Tripartite Unity), Ivan Serpa won
in less than three years (October 1950–July 1953). The seventh issue of Perceptismo the Best Young Painter prize for his work Formas (Forms), and Antônio Maluf won the
[fig. 9] included an interview with Lozza by the critic Abraham Haber. Lozza charac- poster contest.15 Abraham Palatnik, following lengthy discussion by the jury, received an
terized his principal contribution to painting in the following terms: “The conquest of honorable mention for his cinechromatic apparatus. This machine, the first in the series,
total, absolute planarity, by means of the functional unity of FORM and COLOR. This titled Azul e roxo em primeiro movimento (Blue and Purple in First Movement), was
objective reality has been achieved through the consideration of the structural field.” built by taking apart a fan and using the motor that moves the blades. The rhythm of the
Nelly Perazzo presents the key elements of the movement when she explains that cinechromatic apparatus is slow, and it employs dozens of light bulbs that turn on and
off in a repetitive pattern according to settings determined by the artist.”16
… its essential quest pertains to the relation that exists between quantity (that While the First Bienal was certainly crucial in providing a haven for geometric abstrac-
is, the surface and size) and the quality of the color-form, which is designated tion in Brazil and even beyond its borders, the second edition was no less influential. At
cualimetría [“qualimetry”]; the objective is to exalt color as a flat plane. Once the the end of 1953, the Second Bienal opened its doors in its new permanent location at
qualimetry has been determined, the spatiality of the color is cancelled out, and Parque do Ibirapuera in a building designed by Oscar Niemeyer. This edition dedicated
it begins to function in a “coplanar” manner. The “field” (a concept taken from several of its halls to the work of Piet Mondrian, Alexander Calder, and Walter Gropius.
physics) on which the color-forms play is the architectural wall, with which they The Bienal de São Paulo—to this day the largest artistic event in Latin America
constitute an inseparable entity, since the various elements have no interest by since its inauguration—was fundamental from the outset in strengthening Brazil’s
themselves but rather in terms of their interrelationships.14 cultural industry. Its development and location brought to the fore the latent rivalry
between the two cities that were competing for supremacy as symbols of modernity:
Within this dynamic succession of artistic movements, perceptism took a step Rio de Janeiro, which was the capital of the country until 1960 (the year the seat of the
forward, eager to distance itself from other associations in the region. It called for a national government was transferred to Brasília), and São Paulo. In Brazil, aesthetic dif-
timid deconstruction of the work of art, embracing an aesthetic that sought in science ferences in concrete art also took on this geographic dichotomy, with a more dogmatic
its raison d’être. This aesthetic posed the challenge of creating a new work in close commitment to the precepts of the concrete art movement in São Paulo in contrast to
dialogue with the wall—which took on new functions, beyond that of merely being a Rio de Janeiro’s embrace of more innovative experiments in neoconcretismo.
place to hang the work; and it produced transformations in the way a work of art was In 1952, only one year after the First Bienal, and in the context of the first exhibi-
received in that polarized yet energetically active artistic front that inspired Buenos tion of concrete art in the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, Grupo Ruptura was
Aires’s engagement with art and made possible there a fragment of Utopia. officially created. At the inauguration of the show, the manifesto of the same name
was issued and distributed, following the wake of earlier manifestos in declaring war
on any attempt at figurative representation. Under the slogan of “continuity no lon-
III. Brazil: Two Cities and a Biennial; Art, Photography and Concrete ger,” the manifesto was signed by Waldemar Cordeiro, Geraldo de Barros, Leopoldo
Poetry Haar, Lothar Charoux, Anatol Wladyslaw, Kazmer Féjer, and Luiz Sacilotto.
Ruptura represents the first association of concrete artists in Brazil. They exem-
Following the model of the Venice Biennale, on October 20, 1951, one of the events plified a conceptual rigidity that manifested itself in works that were closely tied
that most decisively introduced concrete art to Brazil took place: the Bienal de São to the concept of the “product,” something that distinguished them from Grupo
Paulo. The aim of the exhibition was to bring together in a single, large-scale exhibi- Frente, who, in contrast to the artists from São Paulo (proponents of Max Bill’s poet-
tion space the artistic work of Brazil and the rest of the world. It achieved, from its ics), treated the assumptions of concrete art more loosely and freely.17

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 Nevertheless, the rise of neoconcretismo produced the most surprisingly hybrid one could read praiseful references to Joyce and Pound. Issue 17–18 (March-June
artistic manifestations in 1950s Brazil, in its recuperation of the sensorial and its re- 1963)—the last one I received, in an opened envelope, a victim of Brazilian po-
jection of the militant rationalism of orthodox concrete art, something that seemed lice censorship—included an article by Ernesto Sábato, “En torno a Borges” (On
called for after the latter had nearly monopolized the contemporary art scene for a de- Borges), and a long interview with Cabrera Infante, who was at the time very opti-
cade.18 In a particularly shrewd analysis, Ronald Brito characterizes the movement as mistic about the future of literature in Cuba. In “Función de la Crítica Literaria” (The
“the culmination of the constructivist mindset in Brazil and simultaneously the agent Function of Literary Criticism), Antón Arrufat, basing himself on Engels, defended
of its crisis.”19 Neoconcrete art, with its critical re-reading of the Brazilian milieu and its difficult art that was not politically committed. Regarding music, Juan Blanco, in his
return to color, awakens the slumbering viewer with the aim of making him or her an article “Seis meses de música y danza en Cuba” (Six Months of Music and Dance
entity with agency and a participant in the work of art. This dynamic pointed in two di- in Cuba), quoted the “Plan de Trabajo para 1963” (Work Plan for 1963) drawn up by
rections, including not just the spectator: the work of art itself promoted this dialectic. the Dirección General de Música del Consejo Nacional de Cultura (State Office of
Brazilian photography and poetry found their own space within the experimen- Music of the National Council for Culture): “to bring to light and promote the dis-
tal milieu in which painting was developing, offering a critical output that was mark- semination of music from all periods and styles, without distinction, provided an
edly different from what the previous generation had produced. Literary concretism appropriate minimum of technical proficiency.” What else could we have imagined?
emerged almost simultaneously in Europe and Latin America, a significant fact in Given the evidence, we had the hope that an unprecedented socialist experi-
itself, in that it made the movement one the few (and one of the first) that escaped ment would develop on the island, which was also the belief of respected intel-
the frustrating lag with which cultural movements that originated and derived their lectuals of the caliber of Sartre and de Beauvoir, who had traveled to Cuba in 1960.
authority from Europe had previously arrived in Latin America. Fidel himself, in spite of the excessive repression of the earliest stages of the
Brazilian writers of concrete poetry, who at first leaned strongly Marxist, openly Revolution, had manifested his support for a democratic regime.
supported the recent Cuban Revolution with two concrete poems: Estela cubana We did not receive information about the particular vicissitudes suffered by
(In the Wake of Cuba) by Décio Pignatari and Cubagramma by Augusto de Campos. painters who were exponents of concrete art in Cuba, but we did receive informa-
When I asked the latter about the paradoxical situation that two concrete poems were tion in general about restrictions placed on artists and writers, based on Stalinist
published in 1962, when the movement had practically run its course and the island’s authoritarianism (an intransigent enemy of modern and avant-garde art), as the
visual discourse tended to take inspiration in models linked to a new figurativism and Cuban regime became more and more radicalized.
pop art with epic pretensions, Campos replied: I must emphasize that our poems were conceived between 1960 and 1962, the
year in which the United States began its disastrous trade embargo against Cuba,
The Cuban Revolution, in its heroic stage after the fall of the tyrant Batista, was which was directly responsible for the connection between the island and the USSR.
received with enthusiasm by Brazilian intellectuals. And I should add that we wrote these poems inspired by Mayakovsky’s claim
We lacked, it is true, detailed information about the problems and misfortunes that “there can be no revolutionary art without a revolutionary form.” We aimed,
of modern art in Cuba. for this reason, to create participatory poetry without abandoning the formal val-
However, in the early years, even intellectuals like Cabrera Infante who afterwards ues of invention and the avant-garde. For that very reason, these texts, especially
became bitter enemies of Fidel Castro were at the time supporters of the regime. Décio Pignatari’s, contain complex references and new processes of composition,
I received, for example, the journal Casa de las Américas, founded in 1959, both of them keeping within the basic project of concrete poetry, which goes back
where I read texts by Cortázar on Borges. to Mallarmé’s last poem, “Un coup de dés” (A Throw of the Dice, 1897), which,
In the eighth issue of Casa de las Américas (September-October 1961), there on the fulcrum of two centuries, anticipated modern poetics and, in my opinion,
was, among other articles, a text by the poet Nicolás Guillén that highlighted a continues to be the threshold of the new poetry, anticipating the latest technologi-
statement by Fidel himself in his “Palabras a los intelectuales” (Words to the cal changes and poetics of digital language.
Intellectuals), where he guaranteed freedom of artistic expression. Today I would not write the same poem in homage to the Cuban Revolution,
Another text, signed by Edmundo Desnoes, “La pintura cubana” (Cuban Painting), since the initial regime, which seemed generously socialist, now has radicalized
referred favorably to the work of constructivist artists, emphasizing the pioneer of and become a dictatorship, as repressive as any other, limiting freedom and de-
concrete art, Sandu Darie, and even reproducing one of his paintings as an illustration. mocracy, which, despite all its defects, is still the least harmful of regimes for a
There, as in Brazil, figurative art dominated at the time, although the creation humanity that centuries of history have shown is led predominantly by ambition
of the MASP (Museu de Art de São Paulo) and the MAM (Museu de Arte Moderna), and egotism—“manunkind,” in E. E. Cumming’s words. Nonetheless, the United
the biennials in São Paulo (the first was in 1951), and the militancy of concrete paint- States continues to contribute to the perpetuation of the regime, maintaining for
ers began to reverse the situation. In the review’s thirteenth issue (July-October), nearly half a century its senseless economic blockade.

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 This all contributes to the fact that these poems—though they are insepa- Fig. 10. Poem by José
rable from their era (1960–62)—preserve a certain ethical and poetic value, in part Lino Grünewald reproduced
because of the personal risk their political commitment implied in Brazil at the on page 29 of issue no. 2
time. I recall that, because of both poems, Cubagramma and Estela cubana, our (year 1) of the journal
publisher, Revista dos Tribunais, refused to print the second issue of the review Invenção, 1962
Invenção, edited by the concrete poets, even after the entire issue had been type-
set, arguing that it did not accept “poems by communists” (which we weren’t,
nor had we ever been). The journal was in the end printed by Masao Ohno, who
wished immediately to acquire all of the material that had been typeset. On March
31, 1964, a military coup d’état brought an end to democracy in Brazil, and as the
police state became more and more authoritarian, the second issue of the journal
was withdrawn from circulation and began to be distributed clandestinely.
The Cubagramma poem, on loan for this exhibition, appeared in a limited run,
in 1962, withdrawn along with the second issue of Invenção, in whose pages it
also appeared. As for Estela cubana, also published in the book-journal Noigandres
5 (1962), that poem has been republished, always as an insert, in all the editions
of the book Poesia pois é poesia (Poetry, Well, is Poetry), which since 1977 has
collected the poetic oeuvre of Décio Pignatari.
Three more issues of the journal Invenção appeared, in 1963, 1964, and 1967,
and it never ceased to provoke the dictatorial regime. The military men in charge,
however, were more concerned with the texts and behavior of popular musicians,
who had a significant presence on television and in concerts and whom millions
of Brazilians could see.20

The journal Noigandres should be understood as the mouthpiece that gave visibil-
ity and presence to the concrete poetry movement in Brazil, initially comprising Décio
Pignatari (b. 1927 in Jundiaí, São Paulo) and Augusto de Campos (b. 1931 in São Paulo)
and his brother Haroldo (São Paulo 1929–2003), who were later joined by Ronaldo
Azeredo (Rio de Janeiro, 1937–2006) and José Lino Grünewald (1931–2000), “our man
in Rio,” as Pignatari called him, to stress Grünewald’s Carioca origins in contrast to the
majority of concrete poets who hailed from São Paulo. Noigandres found its logical
continuation in the emergence of Invenção, of which five issues were published and
which itself represented a compendium of the best and most avant-garde graphic
composition in Brazil in the 1960s [fig. 10] .
The central concern of concrete poetry was language, and its exponents proposed
a new spatial syntax, which they found in the poetry of Mallarmé and Ezra Pound, two
of its main precursors. The word in the works of these two poets underwent a defini-
tive transformation, becoming a multidimensional element that affected not only the
language of the poem but its visual qualities as well, conferring markedly plastic quali-
ties on their compositions. This transformation in the “surface” of the poem led to the
exhibition of concrete poetry in spaces that up to that point had been limited to the
exhibition of painting, drawing, and sculpture.21 This first phase of concrete poetry, in
its use of space and typography, approached the postulates of the first manifestations
of minimalism almost ten years prior to the development of that movement.

Fig. 11. Views of the

Aula Magna hall at the
University Campus in
Caracas. Photographs by
Paolo Gasparini. Archivos
Fundación Villanueva

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Fundación Juan March

 To this day, the best and most precise characterization of concrete poetry contin- ing from the very beginning the guidelines of the structure in which the events of a
ues to be that offered in 1958 by Décio Pignatari and Haroldo and Augusto de Campos plastic nature will take shape23”
in the text “Plano-piloto para poesia concreta” (Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry), pub- It is to Villanueva’s undeniable credit that he could create for Caracas a space
lished originally in São Paulo in the fourth issue of Noigandres, in which they present unique in Latin America, representative of a corpus belonging to a part, at least, of
the graphic space as a structural agent. The poem is understood as an object in and of modernist architectural thought (given that some in the modernist school opposed
itself, with the aim of producing the phenomenon of meta-communication. the principles of “integration,” considering it to be mere ornamentation): on the cam-
Photography in Brazil in this period found in Geraldo de Barros its most unique pus one may find works by Jean Arp, Victor Vasarely (who also created a series of
and characteristic representative among all those photographers who, in the main prints titled Venezuela, with texts by Guillermo Meneses that address the continu-
associated with photography clubs, were exploring another way of understanding the ous dialogue between the French and Venezuelan capitals), Antoine Pevsner, André
object of photography. They accomplished a radical turn in redirecting the gaze toward Bloc, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Wifredo Lam, and Fernand Léger. Among the Venezuelan
decidedly abstract constructions in order to question photography’s traditional link to artists invited to contribute their works to the campus were Alejandro Otero, Pascual
pictorialism. With his Rolleiflex camera, which allowed him to take several exposures, Navarro, Mateo Manaure, Francisco Narváez, Miguel Arroyo, and Omar Carreño.
Barros developed a novel approach to composition and rhythm, placing him in the Alexander Calder’s monumental work for the Aula Magna [fig. 11] brought to a close
vanguard in opposition to previous trends. the most sustained and successful collaboration with plastic artists enjoyed by any
Thomas Farkaz (who, together with Barros, had founded in 1949 the program of Latin American architect in the twentieth century, making Villanueva not only an oblig-
study in photography and the photo lab at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo), German atory reference in the continent but also one of the most influential leaders of trans-
Lorca, Gaspar Gasparian, Haruo Ohara, and José Yalenti, along with José Oiticica formations in the art world in his country in the 1950s.
Filho, likewise managed to situate their photography on a conceptual plane in which The relationship between the exponents of geometric art in Venezuela and its rep-
they could defend its self-referentiality with a complex output that was marked from resentatives in the French capital can serve as a pretext for a history of the develop-
the very beginning by its conspicuously experimental aims.22 ments in art in Venezuela after the second half of the 1940s; it offers keys to under-
While the history of nineteenth-century Latin American photography has been standing the complex art scene in Venezuela, one which perhaps more intensely than
thoroughly mapped out by scholars and critics who have managed thereby to grant it any other experienced the effects of crisscrossing transatlantic voyages. A curious fact
canonical status, the construction of a definitive image of experimental photography supporting this claim may be found in various texts from the period that number at fif-
in Brazil is still underway, and the achievements of photographers working in the teen the Venezuelan painters based in Paris who defended geometric art around 1950.
1950s continue to await their own scholarly and critical legitimation. Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Narciso Debourg made Paris their permanent
home, but in addition, Alejandro Otero, Pascual Navarro, and many other geometric
artists from Venezuela were frequent visitors in the French capital. Likewise, it was
IV. Carlos Raúl Villanueva, the Integration of the Arts symptomatic of this situation that in Paris Los Disidentes (The Dissidents) drafted and
and the Caracas-Paris Axis issued their manifesto (Manifiesto del No) and the journal whose title shared their
name. The third paragraph of this declaration emphasizes the origin of its signatories,
The integration of the arts is a commonplace in discussions of the Ciudad Universitaria Venezuela, and offers a defense against accusations of evasion and of creating dep-
de Caracas, the most Pharaonic work Carlos Raúl Villanueva ever designed. It is ersonalized art, from those sectors that demanded socially committed figurative art.
without a doubt the most successful and organic of all the architectural projects in Venezuelan geometric artists, whether in Caracas or Paris (with government
Latin America that sought to embody the communion of the arts on major university grants or by their own means), shared something in common with the concrete art-
campuses. Neither the fusion of murals and architecture on the main campus of the ists from Argentina, namely, the idea that the new art had a profoundly transformative
Universidad Autónoma de México nor the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte in Havana (de- role in society: they shared a fascination with Utopia.
signed by Ricardo Porro, in collaboration with the Italian architects Roberto Gottardi and
Vittorio Garatti) managed to create an urban space that so thoroughly represented the
aim of designing an architectural organism in perfect symbiosis with the plastic arts. V. The Brevity of Concrete Art in Havana: Departures and Returns
The idea of integrating the arts in architecture was much debated in Europe after the
Second World War; Le Corbusier, as architect, painter, and critic, was one of the main Although the geometric art of Carmen Herrera [fig. 12] undeniably marks the begin-
proponents of the notion. Villanueva adopts these postulates when he argues that: ning of experiments with abstraction in Cuba, her name continues to be familiar only
“… within this synthesis, architecture, given its adherence to issues of functionality, among specialists in the subject, for her work remains largely forgotten, exiled from
currently bears the responsibility of defining general concerns from the outset: outlin- the halls of museums and the curricula of universities. Carmen Herrera is to painting

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Fundación Juan March

 in Cuba what Clara Porset is to design, and the two have shared a similar fate: exces-
sive scorn from official quarters. It is high time for a revision of histories and criticism
that can provide both of them a place in debates about modernism that, according to
the rigorous nature of their work, they both deserve.
Carmen Herrera has not enjoyed better fortunes outside of Cuba either. Her work,
almost all of it produced in the solitude of a humble apartment in New York, has hardly
received to this day, now that the artist is in her nineties, the recognition that it de-
served six decades ago. Her recent inclusion in exhibitions in major galleries and pres-
tigious museums leads one to conclude that art history is partial and fickle, and merit
is not always the ultimate reason for recognition. Lacking hardly any contact with the
contemporary movements in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, Herrera’s circle was
limited to the group of Cuban artists residing in New York (Jesse Fernández and the
esteemed geometric artist Waldo Balart, who now lives in Madrid), which leads one
to imagine that her art would have more in common with the compositions of Barnett
Newman and Ellsworth Kelly than with her Latin American contemporaries.
Herrera married the American Jess Lowenthal in 1939 and at the age of twenty-
two moved to New York, where she resides today, receiving visitors with lucidness
despite arthritis that confines her to a wheelchair. A brief stay in Paris was followed
Fig. 12. Carmen Herrera by her return to Manhattan where she worked in private on an oeuvre that at times
in Cuba, undated. engages in a dialogue more with minimalist art than with geometric abstraction.
Archivo Museo Nacional Clara Porset [fig. 13] , together with Lina Bo Bardi, is today considered one of
de Bellas Artes, de la the pioneers of industrial design in Latin America. She was born in Matanzas, Cuba,
Habana on May 25, 1895, and studied in New York and Paris. In the summer of 1934, Porset

Fig. 14. Josef Albers

giving a lecture at the
Universidad de La Habana,
Havana, 1952. Anonymous
photograph. Courtesy of
the Josef and Anni Albers
Foundation

FIG. 13. Clara Porset

ca. 1915

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Fundación Juan March

attended classes at Black Mountain College, where she met Josef Albers. Invited by Barr, Jr. In the letter dated January 30,1950, Darie writes, “On my own, a long time
Porset, Alberts visited Cuba in 1935, where he gave a series of lectures at Havana’s ago I arrived at many of the same conclusions as Madí, and in my studio there are a
Lyceum. (Albers would return to the island on several occasions, one of them being number of objects that would bear a clear kinship with those of your group.” Further
1952, when he taught several classes in the Architecture Department at the University on, he says, “In renouncing the charm of surrealism, one must also renounce the her-
of Havana [fig. 14] .) After the Cuban Revolution, Porset, who had close ties to the metic language pre-fabricated by poets, manifesto-manufacturing prophets, occultists
Left and who was at the time residing in Mexico, returned to Havana, where she de- and quacks, who conceal sources of inspiration and historical evolution, producing
signed several projects for the new revolution: furniture for the Ciudad Escolar Camilo useless prose necessary only for uncouth, affected painters.”
Cienfuegos, for the Escuela Nacional de Arte, and for the Escuela de Artes Plásticas In his next letter, from August 28, 1950, Darie presents Kosice three of his latest
(the work of the architect Ricardo Porro). works known under the general label of transformable structures and indicates that
Porset’s sympathies for the initial phase of the Revolution and her ties to causes among his speculations in the plastic arts is “the idea of initiating the division of the
in defense of the less fortunate have not served her for much; nor has her work in rectangle, of considering the variation of triangles as painting-forms in a continuous
Mexico, where beginning in the 1940s she developed the furniture for the creations space. My spatial structures are organized under an orthogonal rhythm, and the ag-
of the architect Luis Barragán (who designed the furnishings for the Pierre Marqués gregated elements compose and suggest the prolongation of the plane into the dis-
hotel in Acapulco); nor has the fact that she was the artist who best understood the tance where it is no longer possible to imagine the end … toward the infinite.”
relationship between design and commitment to social causes. Carmen Herrera and In Kosice’s reply, he invites Darie to collaborate on the magazine Madí, and, in a
Clara Porset are two key figures for understanding the arrival of abstraction in the early subsequent letter (both were written on Madinemsor letterhead but are undated),
stages of modernism on the island. In Porset’s case, it was her connection with the Kosice informs him that in the fourth issue of the journal they have published two
experience of Bauhaus that made her a visionary in the field of design in Cuba. Neither photographs and a brief text taken from a catalogue sent by Darie from the exhibition
the urgency nor the radicalness of the new national project begun in Cuba in the early that took place in the Havana Lyceum. (This must refer to the show held from October
1960s justifies today the empty (and forbidden) terrain left by the absence of Clara 9 to 20, 1950, in which Darie exhibited his “pictorial structures.”)
Porset and Carmen Herrera from the island’s cultural spaces. In the letter dated March 26, 1951, Darie records for his friend two curious quotes
from his recent trip to New York, where he had participated in a group exhibition at the
Rose Fried Gallery. The first of these is “the turn of phrase of a very charming American
VI. An Exchange of Letters between Sandu Darie and Gyula Kosice woman [that] Rothfuss will probably find amusing: ‘The frame is an architectural of-
fense’.” The second is taken from a letter sent to Darie by the critic Clement Greenberg:
The correspondence between Sandu Darie and Gyula Kosice consists of twenty-sev- “The painter-sculptor of the future will have to be a carpenter.” I have not been able to
en letters, twelve penned by Darie and the other fifteen sent by Kosice to the Cuban find the original letter from Greenberg in the archives of the Cuban museum.
painter born in Romania. Their fascinating exchange began with a letter sent from On January 13, 1952, Kosice writes, “we also have taken the liberty of including
Havana on November 27, 1949, and ends with a final letter from Cuba dated July 25, you among the representatives of our journal abroad, given your friendship and your
1958. This correspondence, astonishingly constant over the course of nearly a decade, position at the vanguard of non-figurative art.” Darie thanks him for the shipment of
remained unpublished and its existence was practically unknown. It has been housed the fifth issue of Madí and remarks on the unexpected arrival from another source
at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana ever since the arrival of the painter’s bequest of the second and third issues of the magazine Perceptismo, a comment that receives
to the museum, shortly after his death. This is the first time it has appeared in print. no response from the Argentinian artist.
In the first of the letters, Darie remarks that he has received news of the Madí In the following, undated, letter from Kosice, he celebrates the appearance of
movement through Jean Xceron, the North American abstract painter of Greek origin, the Cuban Noticias de Arte (Art News), “a fundamentally important publication from
and he asks Kosice for a copy of the journal Arte Madí Universal, as well as informa- every point of view, above all for the education and guidance of young people avid
tion about the group’s latest work. Barely two weeks later, Kosice replies, flattered by to see their age and their art strengthened, above all in Latin America, where there
the Cuban painter’s interest, informing him that both the inaugural and the second is- are very few magazines that operate in essentially this direction.” And he offers to
sue (issues 0 and 1) were already out of print. He inquires whether there are painters collaborate.
on the island “who are fighting for the same general aims as your and we are” and On June 3, 1955, Darie writes to Kosice about his joint exhibition with Martínez
invites Darie to collaborate with the magazine. Pedro (which took place between April 25 and May 10 in the Pavilion of Social
In the following letter, dated January 13, 1950, in Havana, Darie responds emphati- Sciences at the University of Havana). From this point forward, Kosice frequent-
cally that there are no painters in Cuba interested in non-representational art and re- ly sends greetings to the Cuban geometric artists Luis Martínez Pedro and Mario
marks on the acquisition by MoMA in New York of one of his paintings, through Alfred Carreño as he signs off each letter.

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Fundación Juan March

 Kosice’s last missive is dated June 29, 1958, in Paris and is written in French. tation from this country or from abroad that reflects the concerns animating the
Almost a month later, on July 25, Darie responds in a handwritten letter, though it is constant creative activity of artists today and always.
possible that what the archive houses is a draft and not the final version of the letter
in what proves to be an indispensable series of documents for the study of Cuban Beginning with the first issue, the review threw itself into events that had a direct
participation in the Madí adventure. connection with matters pertaining to Latin American and in particular with non-figura-
In a recent visit to Buenos Aires, in a conversation with Kosice in his workshop on tive representation. Thus, the issue reports on the First Bienal de São Paulo; reviews the
Calle Humahuaca, I asked about the intense epistolary relationship he had developed fifth, and latest, issue of Madí, which included a contribution by Sandu Darie; and reflects
with the Cuban painter over nearly ten years and the reasons why that correspon- on the text by Abraham Haber, “Lo objetivo y no objetivo en el arte” (The Objective and
dence ended for no apparent reason. “It was in Paris,” he told me, “where I concen- Non-Objective in Art), which had shortly before appeared in the journal Perceptismo.
trated all my energy, and in those years I completely lost touch with him.” This first issue also comments on Walter Gropius’s resignation as Chair of Architecture
in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and includes documents from
the lawsuit between Mies van der Rohe and Edith Farnsworth over Farnsworth House,
VII. The Early 1950s together with photographs of this architectural icon of the modernist movement.
To summarize here the successive issues of the journal, nowadays a rarity appre-
If we exclude the work of Carmen Herrera, in the first half of the 1950s there are ciated by bibliophiles, would prove tiresome, but it is worth highlighting the special
three foundational names with which one might sum up (even at the risk of a certain issue (year 1, issue 11, October-November 1953), devoted entirely to the Cuban contri-
reductionism) the world of geometric abstraction in Cuba: Sandu Darie, Luis Martínez butions to the second São Paulo biennial, and the text “La pintura abstracta” (Abstract
Pedro, and Mario Carreño. It is no coincidence that the three decided to join as editors Painting) by Mario Carreño, published in the eighth issue (May) of that same year.
of one of the publications that most assertively defended the introduction of abstrac- Another journal that is indispensable in the analysis of the transformations that
tion into the artistic panorama of Cuba, the magazine Noticias de Arte. the field of architecture and eventually the plastic arts as well underwent in the 1950s
In this journal, which lasted for only a short period, Carreño was in charge of the is Arquitectura.24 In April of 1949, the magazine reported on Walter Gropius’s visit to
section on the plastic arts, Enrique Labrador Ruiz coordinated the literature section, Havana [fig. 15] (with an excellent cartoon caricature of the founder of the Bauhaus
Mario Parajón edited the section on theater, and Nicolás Quintana the section on ar- by Heriberto Portell Villa) and published a conversation with the German architect
chitecture. The list of collaborators included important intellectuals of the caliber of the along with Joaquín Weiss’s introduction of Gropius at the Architects Association. The
critics José Gómez Sicre, Joaquín Texidor, and Jorge Romero Brest, writers like José May issues in 1949 and 1957 also present news on Gropius’s work. The January 1959
Lezama Lima, and artists such as Cundo Bermúdez, Gyula Kosice, and Felipe Orlando. issue devotes an in-depth report on the Architects Association’s Gold Medal in 1958,
The first editorial presented the publication’s objectives: awarded to the Alfred Schulthess House designed by Richard Neutra, with the col-
laboration of the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.25
It is our aim that Noticias de Arte not be “just another magazine,” but rather the Neutra’s work in Havana is little known, both within and outside Cuba, given its
echo of a pressing need in our artistic milieu, which demands a publication that location (an exclusive residential district with limited public access) and the building’s
can present, in a succinct and carefully selected manner, the different and varied new role as the Swiss embassy after Schulthess left Cuba following the nationaliza-
intellectual activities that give shape to the sensibility and future of contemporary tion of Banco Garrigó, where he served as vice-president.
thought. Noticias de Arte does not propose to “fill a void,” as some new publica- Another of the projects in Cuba by architects directly connected with the Bauhaus
tions are wont to pompously declare, but to contribute modestly, according to its was Mies van der Rohe’s design for the headquarters of Bacardí in Santiago. The pres-
means, to the widening of our cultural horizons and, without the prejudices that ent exhibition displays several original plans and collages from this project that was
might tarnish the free expression of thought, to disseminate any cultural manifes- never carried out [cat. 220]. (The pieces are currently housed at MoMA in New York.)

Fig. 15. Sandu Darie and Fig. 16. Back and front cover
Walter Gropius in Havana, of the catalogue of Luis
1949. Archivo Museo Martínez Pedro and Sandu
Nacional de Bellas Artes Darie’s joint exhibition at the
Pavilion of Social Sciences,
Universidad de La Habana,
Havana, 1955

28

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It is closely related to other, later projects by Mies in which the use of orthogonal grids young painters to adopt abstraction, both informalist and geometric, though not
and open floor plans is repeated in a very similar fashion.26 all of them would attempt to form a group but would follow their own individual
The creation of the group Los Once (The Eleven),27 associated with informalist abstrac- paths. From among them, Alberto Menocal and José Rosabal approached our
tion more in line with the new trends in painting in New York than with the old European group and eventually joined. Zilia Sánchez, who very early on stood out in opting
orthodoxies, and the joint exhibition of Luis Martínez Pedro and Sandu Darie in the Pavilion for geometric abstraction, remained independent, though not antagonistic to the
of Social Sciences at the University of Havana between April and May of 1955—which concrete artists, with whom she maintained a cordial relationship.29
carried no particular title but subsequently became known as the Primera exposición con-
creta (First Exhibition of Concrete Art) [fig. 16] —are events that indicate a determined Loló Soldevilla and Pedro de Oraá traveled to Caracas in the first half of 1957 and
reorientation toward geometric abstraction, a clean break with earlier practices in pictorial exhibited their work, respectively, in the Centro Profesional del Este and in the Sardio
representation, entrenched under the banner of a Cubanness that had become a cliché. Gallery. When they returned to Cuba, they founded the Galería de Arte Color-Luz
[fig . 18] , which became a sanctuary for artists who followed the trend of geometric
abstraction. On October 31 of that year, the gallery held its inaugural exhibition, titled
VIII. The Return of Loló Soldevilla Pintura y escultura cubana 1957 (Cuban Painting and Sculpture 1957), in which a size-
able group of painters and sculptors participated, representing various tendencies,
In 1956 Dolores Soldevilla, better known as Loló, returned to Cuba from Paris, where though the majority of them worked in the field of abstract art.30 The poet José Lezama
she had maintained an intense personal and professional relationship with the Lima wrote the inaugural presentation, whose baroque prose is worth quoting:
Spanish painter Eusebio Sempere, with whom she shared an exhibition in 1954 at the
University of Valencia—a period which still awaits detailed examination by critics and It is no longer a matter of discovering a blue background for the stellar yellow of
which could shed much light on the production of both artists. our foregrounds, of finding sacred icons from among the peasantry, or rainbow-
On March 22, 1956, Soldevilla organized the show Pintura de hoy: Vanguardia de colored transom-windows like a paradoxical peacock in purple or orange. This now
la escuela de París (Painting Today: The Avant-garde of the Parisian School), in the awaits: a mystery that becomes a secret, a seed that turns into a spark. Between
Palacio de Bellas Artes in Havana. Under that vague title she included a well-chosen the real and the invisible, a flash of light. And the proof of this act of penetrating
list of European and Latin American artists,28 and it became one of the first exhibition fire is in that analogue which searches already for the unknown (with an urgency
spaces for some of the most outstanding names in non-figurative art, particularly in that almost consumes it), with that which it can show as completed and hoarded
geometric abstraction. The painter Mario Carreño, as adviser for plastic arts at the away… 31
Instituto Nacional de Cultura, wrote the text for the exhibition brochure.
Loló’s presence and the appearance of the gallery were vital in the creation of
The painter and critic Pedro de Oraá presents Loló [fig. 17] as the group Diez Pintores Concretos. There are hardly any surviving photographs of the
having a determining role not only in the creation of the group Diez Pintores whole group, which lasted, like so many others, for only a brief time. (Though there
Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters) but also in persuading a noteworthy number of are no manifestos or record for the group’s founding, its members agree that it was
created in 1958 and its disappearance coincided with the closing of Color-Luz gal-
Fig. 17. Dolores lery, around which almost all its activities had developed.) In 1961 the gallery closed
Soldevilla next to several its doors in the face of pressures resulting from the Revolution, which condemned
of her works in 1950. to a death sentence anything that implied private property. Several of the group’s
Archivo Museo Nacional members abandoned the country permanently. In contrast, Loló, like many others,
de Bellas Artes embraced the revolutionary cause and joined the National Institute of Tourism as a toy

Fig. 18. Views of Galería

de Arte Color-Luz and Loló
Soldevilla in the gallery,
Havana, 1957. Archivo
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes

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Fundación Juan March

designer. Later, she became an editor for the official newspaper Granma. She aban- the inner necessity of the work of art.” … Otero Rodríguez is wandering along
doned her luminous bas-reliefs and the small-format celestial bodies that linked her the same path. He claims that “painting has always been a witness of a mode of
tenuously with the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp, turning instead to larger-format works being in the world, and abstraction, as much or more so than any other approach,
with titles that celebrated the revolutionary epic. One of her defining works, donated discovers and affirms it,” with which he attempts the extraordinary, namely, the
to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana, underwent a radical transformation when humanization of the abstract. Like other officiants of his faction, he attempts to
she re-baptized it as Homenaje a Fidel (Homage to Fidel).32 lead the goal of integration that abstractionism proclaims toward a positive totality
of mankind. Our faith lies in the total man, he says. And from this prefabricated
perspective, he affirms that “we abstract painters engage in a dialogue with man-
IX. A Conversation with our Abstract Painters? kind and we participate in his drama, not as observers, but as integral participants
in his drama and his being.”
The criticism around abstract art in Cuba takes on a fairly regular form following the
various reprintings after the Revolution of the polemical essay by Juan Marinello, Marinello goes on to say, “Only in a society split into antagonistic classes can
Conversación con nuestros pintores abstractos (Conversation with Our Abstract abstract art appear; and only in the decisive stage of the struggle between two social
Painters), which appeared for the first time in 1958. In his text, Marinello remarks in classes—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in our times—can there be a move-
the first paragraph that the idea for such a dialogue had tempted him for some time, ment that bases its excellence on isolating itself from general comprehension.” It is
making it clear that the debate around abstract art in Cuba had its origins in the last evident that in the end, this biased, Marxist viewpoint on the social function of art
phase of the republican period, while the ideological and cultural discourse of the had repercussions on the future development of concrete art in Cuba, despite the
nascent Revolution dealt geometric abstraction a final blow, given its shifting prefer- fact that a significant portion of the artists tied to geometric abstraction held deep
ences for a certain kind of figurative or pop art with didactic aims. Between these ex- sympathies for the Left, with some even temporarily joining the Communist Party,
tremes, concrete artists in Cuba could find scant support in a movement which some of which Juan Marinello was also a member. However, what this Cuban intellectual
joined enthusiastically but that privileged modes of representation whose codes were disparagingly called “geometric distraction,” whether in Havana or Caracas, never
more easily identified with the new directions that characterized the Revolution. enjoyed his sympathy; he found a precedent for his arguments in the zeal of Miguel
Marinello [fig. 19] focuses his attack on the work of European artists (Paul Klee, Otero Silva, and one may observe their continuation in Marta Traba.
Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevitch, Theo van Doesburg) but avoids naming a single The renewed vindication of a nationalist ideology relegated geometric abstraction
exponent of abstract art in Cuba, although the communist intellectual’s first approach to a narrowly marginal position, identified as it was with elitist and bourgeois art, and
to the theme of abstract art in Latin America is through a polemic between the viewed as a legacy of the past essentially unable to satisfy the social demands that
Venezuelans Alejandro Otero and Miguel Otero Silva a year earlier, in 1957. The dis- the Revolution, as a new dogma, now imposed. The disappearance, for all intents and
pute to which Marinello refers—perhaps the most important debate about abstract art purposes, of abstract painting from the island was not accompanied by the major
that ever took place in Venezuela—began with Alejandro Otero’s criticism of the jury’s debates that did emerge in other spheres of cultural activity; thus, unpolemically,
decision in the eighteenth celebration of the Salón de Arte Nacional, which awarded almost silently, its light grew weaker and weaker in the first half of the 1960s. And
prizes to the works of Armando Barrios and Eduardo Gregorio. For Otero, the jury was yet, with the passage of time, this period has proven in retrospect to be one of the
“composed of an overwhelming majority of partisans of a single tendency, which most fascinating, and least familiar, chapters in the history of geometric abstraction
openly contradicts the spirit of the Salón,” declarations he published in the pages of in Latin America.
El Nacional on March 20, 1957.
ENDNOTES
For Marinello:
The painter Alejandro Otero Rodríguez inserts his undeniable discursive gifts in a 1 For an in-depth study of modernity in Latin America, see Hugo Achugar, “Modernidades lati-
rhetorical stream that leaves him nowhere to hold on. Following Kandinsky closely, noamericanas,” in Alfredo Boulton y sus contemporáneos. Diálogos críticos en el arte venezo-
he attempts to save abstractionism from its mortal reactionary sin. Kandinsky had lano 1912–1974 (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Caracas: Fundación Cisneros, 2008).
written, with his habitual vagueness, that “the artist’s total freedom is limited by 2 One of the most thorough studies of this case can be found in Jorge Francisco Liernur and
Pablo Pschepiurca, La red austral: obras y proyectos de Le Corbusier y sus discípulos en la
Argentina: 1924–1965 (Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmas; Buenos Aires: Prometeo
Libros, 2008).
3 Mario Gradowczyk, Arte abstracto: Cruzando líneas desde el Sur (Buenos Aires: Editorial de
la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, 2006), 89.
4 Seven issues of Círculo y Cuadrado were published, plus an extraordinary volume that
brought together issues 8, 9, and 10.

FIG. 19. Juan Marinello

(at right) and caricaturist
Juan David at a Unesco
session, Paris, 1966

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Fundación Juan March

5 Círculo y Cuadrado 1 (May 1936). Mouthpiece of the Asociación de Arte Constructivo. ships (which the Gestalt objectifies) and by creating for itself a tacit signification (Merleau-
6 Ibid. Ponty) that emerges in it for the first time. If we had to search for a metaphor for the work
7 Abstracción: el paradigma amerindio [exhibition catalogue, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; of art, it would not be found in the machine or the object taken objectively, but (following
Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia] (Brussels: Société des Expositions du Palais des S. Langer and W. Wleidé) in living organisms. This comparison, however, would still not be
Beaux-Arts; Valencia: IVAM, 2001), 25. sufficient to express the specific reality of the aesthetic organism.”
8 In Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, ed., The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the 19 Ronaldo Brito, Neoconcretismo: Vértice e ruptura do projeto construtivo brasileiro, Temas e
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2007), 226. Debates 4 (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte; Instituto Nacional de Artes Plásticas, 1985.)
9 Esteban lisa de ‘Arturo’ al ‘Di Tella’ [exhibition catalogue] (Buenos Aires: Galería Ruth 20 I contacted Augusto de Campos via email on October 14, 2010, and received his response
Benzacar, 2002), 5. the following day, likewise via email.
10 Gyula Kosice, Autobiografía (Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso, 2010), 26. 21 For a study of the inclusion of Brazilian concrete poetry in museum and gallery spaces, see
11 Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, “Buenos Aires: Rompiendo el marco,” reprinted in The Geometry of João Bandeira, “Palabaras no espaço: A poesía na Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta,”
Hope, 231 (in Spanish). reprinted in the catalogue Concreta ’56, a raíz da forma (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna
12 At the end of 1957, Gyula Kosice received the news from the French embassy in Buenos de São Paulo, 2006), 121–41.
Aires that he had been chosen for a year-long fellowship in Paris. 22 Helouisa Costa and Renato Rodrigues da Silva, A fotografia moderna no Brasil (São Paulo:
13 In the Spanish newspaper El País from January 31, 1980, in an interview with Juan Manuel Cosac and Naify, 2004), offers a thorough and illuminating panorama of photography in Brazil,
Bonet, Max Bill offered his version of this split: “I resigned in 1956 and left definitively— beginning in the nineteenth century and following with an analysis of modern experiments in
taking with me half the college—the following year. The tensions were the product of the photography until the decline of the photo club phenomenon, making their book an essential
actions of two groups, the group led by the Argentinian Tomás Maldonado and the conserva- resource for understanding the historical complexity of modern photography in Brazil.
tive group, which defended the decorative aspect of design. Maldonado proposed a more 23 Arquitectura 306 (Havana, January 1959).
technically advanced approach that surpassed what was creatively possible. I proposed a 24 The beginnings of the magazine Arquitectura go back to 1917, though its name has varied
much more cautious approach: no foolishness, careful development of projects, working somewhat over the course of the many years it has existed. Currently is appears once every
from a solid foundation, not with ideas up in the air. Maldonado was also very arrogant, with three months under the title Arquitectura Cuba.
an incredible desire to always play an important role. A great bluffer, really, with all his jargon 25 The most thorough study of the Schulthess House, since 1961 the official residence of the
that was supposedly creative. I left when maintaining the alliance between Maldonado’s Swiss ambassador in Cuba, is Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, Modernidad tropical: Neutra, Burle
group and the conservative group became oppressive, when it was no longer possible for Marx y Cuba: la casa de Schulthess (Havana: Ediciones Pontón Caribe, 2007), published by the
me to work in peace there.” Swiss embassy in Cuba. I should like to thank Marianne Gerber, the Deputy Chief of Mission
14 Nelly Perazzo, El arte concreto en la Argentina en la década del 40 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones at the Embassy of Switzerland in Cuba, for the gift of several copies of this publication.
de Arte Gaglianone, 1983), 112. 26 I am referring, in particular, to the project Mies designed for the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
15 There are three different versions of the poster that Maluf designed for the first Bienal de 27 The group Los Once initially included Hugo Consuegra, Agustín Cárdenas, Viredo Espinosa,
São Paulo. They basically differ in the background color: one with a white background, an- Tomás Oliva, José Antonio Díaz Peláez, Guido Llinás, Fayad Jamís, Antonio Vidal, José I.
other red, and a third black. A fourth design, with a blue background, was never printed. Bermúdez, Francisco Antigua, and René Ávila.
16 In Luiz Camillo Osorio, Abraham Palatnik (São Paulo: Cosac and Naify, 2004.) 28 At the exhibition one could see works by Jean Arp, Auguste Herbin, Sonia Delaunay, Alberto
17 Grupo Frente developed under the leadership of Ivan Serpa. Their inaugural exhibition took Magnelli, Victor Vasarely (author of the drawing printed on the cover of the exhibition bro-
place in the Galeria do Ubeu in 1954. Its initial members were Carlos Val, Ivan Serpa, Aluiso chure), Jesús Soto, Wilfredo Arcay, Omar Carreño, Jean Dewasne, and Eusebio Sempere,
Carvão, José da Silva Costa, Décio Viera, Lygia Pape, and Lygia Clark. Later César and Hélio among others.
Oiticica, Franz Weissmann, Abraham Palatnik, Elisa Martins, Rubem Ludolf, and Enric Baruch 29 Quoted from responses to an unpublished questionnaire sent by the author to Pedro de
joined the Rio group. Oraá, who replied on May 10, 2010.
18 The neoconcretistas published their manifesto in 1959, signed by Ferreira Gullar, Amílcar de 30 Among the artists who participated in the inaugural show at the Color-Luz gallery were
Castro, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Franz Weissmann, Theon Spanudis, and Reynaldo Jardim. In Wifredo Lam, Sandu Darie, Hugo Consuegra, Cundo Bermúdez, Pedro Álvarez, José Mijares,
one of its paragraphs, the manifesto proclaims: “We do not consider the work of art to be Pedro de Oraá, Loló Soldevilla, and Wilfredo Arcay.
either a ‘machine’ or an ‘object’ but as a quasi-corpus, that is, as an entity whose reality is 31 Pintura y escultura cubana 1957 [exhibition catalogue] (Havana: Galería de Arte Color-Luz,
not exhausted in the external relationship of its parts—an entity that, while it may be broken 1957). Lezama Lima’s text was titled “Nueva Galería.”
down into its component parts, only completely manifest itself in a direct, phenomenological 32 Homenaje a Fidel, a seminal work by Soldevilla signed in 1957, is published with the title
approach. We believe that the work of art exceeds the material mechanism on which it rests, Silencio en diagonal (Diagonal Silence) on p. 184 of Óscar Guzmán Hurtado, Pintores cuba-
not because of some supernatural virtue, but by transcending those mechanical relation- nos (Havana: Ediciones [R], 1962), which leads one to believe that the opportunistic change
in title was made after the year that book was published.

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32

Fundación Juan March

 Irregular Frame/
Shaped Canvas:
Anticipacions,
Inheritances,
Borrowings
CÉSAR PATERNOSTO

33

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T
he publication in 1944 of the magazine Arturo in The appearance of the single—and legendary—issue of Arturo dates from the
Buenos Aires signaled the birth of a genuine avant- brief moment in which the whole movement of young abstractionists presented a
garde within the art languages broadly known as united front. Or, if there were already fissures, they were not yet apparent. The follow-
‘geometric abstraction’. I am not referring exclu- ing year the movement fragmented into several factions, thus giving rise to a long and
sively to Latin America—where a critical historiog- tumultuous history of ideological or aesthetic confrontations, mutual recriminations
raphy has already ascertained that this has been over authorship, and the ensuing antedating of works. In a first instance Gyula Kosice,
the most progressive trend among the modern Carmelo Arden Quin, and Rhod Rothfuss launched what was to be known as the Madí
art developments—but also to Europe, the birth- Group, while Tomás Maldonado, accompanied by his wife Lidy Prati as well as several
place of these movements, which at that time students of the School of Fine Arts—Alfredo Hlito, Enio Iommi, Claudio Girola, Alberto
was living through the devastation of the Second Molenberg—and artists Manuel Espinosa and the Lozza brothers, formed the group
World War, and where art practices had, for the known as Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (Concrete-Invention Art Association).
most part, come to a halt. Although early and valu- Later on, Arden Quin broke with Kosice and Rothfuss in order to promote his own
able manifestations of geometric abstraction had version of Madí art, which he was to continue in Paris, where he moved in 1948. On
taken place in both margins of the Río de la Plata their part, the Lozza brothers branched out from Concreto-Invención and conceived,
during the previous decade—including works by in theory and practice, another innovative variant of geometric abstraction known as
the members of the Asociación de Arte Constructivo (Association of Constructive Art) perceptismo (perceptism).
founded by Joaquín Torres-García on his return to Montevideo and experiences by Juan Sticking to the available documentation, I would like to study the emergence of
del Prete and Esteban Lisa in Buenos Aires—these, however, lacked the forceful reno- the pictorial entity known then as the “irregular frame” (marco irregular) first pro-
vating impetus of the young artists that emerged in the art scene of the 1940s, who, in posed by Rhod Rothfuss in the essay “El marco: un problema de la plástica actual”
the words of Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, enacted “the transgression of a model.”1 (The Frame: A Problem in Contemporary Art) and published in that single issue of
Amazingly, the emergence of this movement in the far-away South American Arturo, which defined a pictorial methodology that was, as a matter of fact, adopted
capitals of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, which already displayed a European influ- by all members of the movement without distinctions until, at least, 1946. If the ‘ir-
enced cosmopolitanism—heavily indebted to French cultural influence—appeared to regular frame’ later lost visibility, it represents, nevertheless, a definitive landmark in
symmetrically repeat the creative explosion of the Russian avant-garde, which had the practices that stress painting’s objecthood: I am thinking of the Brazilian Willys
also occurred in the periphery of Europe at the outset of the First World War and in a de Castro’s Objetos ativos [cat. 155–158] of the 1950s, or the shaped canvases that
cultural environment heavily conditioned by the Francophile Russia of the Czars. The appeared in the United States just about the same time, in the late 1950s and early
political and social circumstances show another intriguing parallelism: in Russia the 1960s—two entirely unrelated proposals, though.
avant-garde preceded and was coincidental with the early days of the revolution, while In his theoretical tracts,4 Rothfuss maintained that a painting only arrived at its
in Buenos Aires the abstract movement took shape at a time when workers started self-referentiality when the “background” (el fondo), that pertained to naturalism, was
rallying in support of the then Colonel Perón, the polemical figure that was to dominate eliminated. In the final paragraph of the above-mentioned essay, he states: “A paint-
the Argentine political scene until his death, three decades later. What’s more, the ing shuold be something that begins and ends within itself. Without interruption.”
appearance of the Peronist movement became, in fact, a watershed in the Argentine Traditional painting appeared to the viewer as a “window” opened but to a fragment
political scene. I will not go beyond pointing to the coincidence of these traumatic of reality; hence Rothfuss affirms that even in cubism and non-figural painting the
social and political circumstances here, because while the Russian avant-garde allied canvas’s formats, not only the rectangular ones, but also the regular formats of the
itself with the revolution (until it was drastically wiped out in the 1920s by the rising circular tondos or the oval ones—which, incidentally, were introduced in modernist
Stalinism), in Buenos Aires many of the young artists embraced a Marxist ideology (fol- painting by the cubists—seem to interrupt the continuity of a larger plastic theme.
lowing the Russian ideological model), a move that was foreign, if not inimical, to the “This only disappears,” he says, “when the frame is rigorously structured according to
popular fervor that Perón’s figure had originated—a diffuse motivation into which the the composition of the painting; that is to say, when the border of the canvas is made
disenchantment with the traditional parties and the feeling that long unfulfilled social to play an active role in the artistic creation.”
demands were being met spontaneously coalesced.2 This illustrates the complexity of Rothfuss proposed, therefore, that the inner structure, the composition of the
the cultural strains shaken by the tumultuous political events of those days; episodes painting should determine the polygonal shape of the perimeter, that is, what he
that brought to the fore the manifest divorce of the Argentinean intelligentsia (the termed the “structured frame.” A method that, in turn, he distinguished from the
Eurocentric cultivated elites) from the social and economic conditioning that made inverse approach, in which one proceeded in a centripetal fashion, from the exterior
possible the rise of a populist leader.3 to the interior of the work, and which he named “cut out frame” (marco recortado).

PAGES 32–33:
Detail of CAT. 34 (p. 108)

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It is impossible to find a proposal as radical as this in the field of geometric abstract
painting of the time either in the Americas or in Europe. And it was not until the
1960s that the American historian Michael Fried suggested an analogous concept,
“deductive structuring,” to characterize Frank Stella’s works of the early 1960s, in
which the monochromatic bands run parallel to the non-orthogonal or polygonal can-
vas structuring.5
In spite of the active role that Rothfuss confers to the canvas border, the essay’s
title, as much as its content, refer to the frame (it is obviously presumed that in the
end, that canvas border would end up framed), unlike the denuded shaped canvases
that appeared much later in the United States (Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Kenneth
Noland, et al.) As I see it, Rothfuss accepted the age-old practice of framing paint-
ings—even if this was not essential to the medium but just a utilitarian accessory—in
order to emphasize the radical modification inflicted to the traditional rectangular pic-
torial space. If paintings in altars already had frames, beginning in the seventeenth
century, when easel painting was consolidated—the portable artifact that defines the
Western pictorial medium—the use of frames is definitely established: they show a
conspicuous craftsmanship (carved wood, gold leafed) and were often manufactured
in large, imposing sizes. If the frame was conceived for utilitarian reasons, it also
performed a visual function: it served to isolate the “window” of traditional painting
from the surrounding space, which could be a velvety wall or a no less elaborate set
of furniture. In other words, that limiting yet transitional function came to reinforce the
co-real virtuality of traditional painting.
Carlos María (Rhod) Rothfuss (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1920–1969) surely was the
most elusive and enigmatic figure of this whole artistic generation,6 even though it
is fairly well ascertained that at the time he joined the avant-garde movement in the
mid-1940s, he not only had a formal artistic education, but he was also a budding art-
ist and an art teacher.
I have already pointed out that Rothfuss’s theoretical conception of both “struc-
tured” and “cut out” frames can be placed in the year prior to the publication of
the magazine Arturo, that is, 1943. However, the majority of his “structured frame”
works, which we could call his “classic pieces” [cat. 33, 34], have been dated 1946
or later.7 Only three works have been identified as having been realized prior to these.
One of them, Sin título (Arlequín) (Untitled [Harlequin])—a decidedly cubist composi-
tion8—has been dated 1944 [fig. 1] . A second work has been classified by Agnès
de Maistre as “a key inscribed into a polygonal picture.”9 It is evident that these two
works would exemplify what Rothfuss later called the “cut out frame”—that is, a
cutting from the outer edges inward—since the plastic subject of these pieces is not
in keeping with the structure of the support. In fact, there is a manifest discrepancy
between Rothfuss’s conceptualization of the “structured frame” that appears in the
Arturo essay—a theoretical elaboration that, as I anticipated, should date from 1943
or earlier—and his pictorial work of that time. The third work is reproduced in Arturo:
it is an undated work that goes by the title of Plástica en madera (Art Work on Wood)
and which de Maistre calls Guerrero azteca (Aztec Warrior). It has anthropomorphic
features and betrays a more than superficial knowledge of Joaquín Torres-García’s

Fig. 1. Rhod Rothfuss, Sin

título (Arlequín) (Untitled
[Harlequin]), 1944. Oil on
canvas, 175.9 x 83.8 cm
(69 ¼ x 33 in.). Colección
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

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Fundación Juan March

 wood reliefs (more on this relationship in a moment).
How did Rothfuss arrive at that conception of the “irregular frame” As we shall
see, there is no easy answer to this question.
There are several known precedents of non-orthogonal supports in modern paint-
ing. To begin with, Mario Gradowczyk and Nelly Perazzo10 quote examples by Giorgio
de Chirico, Jean Arp, Christian Schad, Eric Buchholz, El Lissitzky, László Peri, Charles
Green Shaw, and Balcomb Greene as other artists that occasionally employed a po-
lygonal support. And I say “occasionally” because unlike Rothfuss, who sustained his
practice with a lucid theoretical formulation, no such pronouncement is known on
the part of these artists (excepting Charles Green Shaw who, in New York in 1933,
began a series of paintings on irregular supports which he dubbed “plastic polygons”
and that he directly associated in his writings11 with the New York skyline—for him,
skyscraper silhouettes were the symbols of the dynamic American modernity: some-
times he depicted the buildings literally besides cutting out their silhouettes; on other
occasions he merely alluded to them by means of the contour of the polygonal pe-
rimeter of the canvas) [fig. 2] . Neither has research been carried out into whether
Rothfuss ever got to know the experiences of these artists, a necessary element of
Fig. 2. Charles Green Shaw, judgment in order to gauge the proposal of the Uruguayan artist.
Polygon, 1936. The Hungarian artist Lázsló Peri, who had migrated to Berlin, exhibited some
Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 40 cm works of irregular contours at the Galerie Der Sturm in a show held together with
(27 x 15 ¾ in.). Moholy-Nagy in 1922.12 The following year, 1923, he participated in the Grosse
Newark Museum Collection Berliner Kunstausstellung, where he sent works of irregular geometric shapes that
had been realized in cement painted red and black [fig. 3] , a medium with which Peri
was familiar since he was a sculptor and stonemason.
Fig. 4. Joaquín Torres-García, What I am trying to convey is that Peri’s reliefs were forms thought out from the
Planos de color (Planes of normative of the sculpture medium; after all, the relief—inevitably linked to the wall
Color), 1929. Oil on panel, and architecture—precedes by millennia the appearance of easel painting in the West,
28 x 22 x 2 cm (11 x 8 ⅝ the art object which happened to be Rothfuss’s conceptual focus. This does not mean
x ¾ in.). Private collection, to say that had Rothfuss seen those forms or spatial constructions—as Rowell calls
Germany them—they could very well have fired his imagination. Indeed, Tomás Maldonado had
a book by Arp and Lissitzky, Die Kunstismen (1925), in which one of Peri’s reliefs is
reproduced.13 If Rothfuss saw them,14 how is it that he ended up conceiving the ‘ir-
regular frame’ in paintings still indebted to cubist aesthetics? Would it not have been
more logical that after seeing Peri’s works he approach a straightforward abstraction?
Everything appears to indicate that Rothfuss first arrived at the conception of the “ir-
regular frame” on a theoretical plane, and that the artistic execution of these concep-
tual postulates required an arduous maturing process in order for him to shed, once
and for all, the cubist language or figurative allusions.
On the other hand, it should be noted that Maldonado—the owner of the above-
mentioned book—only acknowledged Peri’s works around 1946, when he wrote the
essay “Lo abstracto y lo concreto en el arte moderno” (The Abstract and the Concrete
in Modern Art);15 before then, in 1944, he produced a linocut of automatist conception
and other vignettes of a freewheeling abstraction and biomorphic forms for the cover
of the magazine Arturo. In fact, the works of the young artists reproduced in that leg-

Fig. 5. Joaquín Torres-García,

Madera Planos de Color
(Wood Construction with
Planes of Color), 1929. Oil
on panel, 42.2 x 20.3 cm (16
⅝ x 8 in.). Carmen Thyssen-
Bornemisza collection
on deposit at the Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza

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endary single issue of the magazine—with the exception, perhaps, of some drawings known that Alberto Molenberg,19 Raúl Lozza, and Oscar Núñez initiated the “separa-
by Lidy Maldonado (Prati, after the divorce)—respond to the conventions of European tion of the constitutive elements of the picture from the space without abandoning
abstraction known until then. The insistent and programmatic inventionism exposed its coplanar disposition.20 Thus, the picture was abolished as a container.” Not with-
in the texts went, as a matter of fact, far beyond the praxis. out sound reasons, Maldonado characterized this modality as “the greatest discov-
There are two other works that anteceded Rothfuss’s “irregular frame” and that ery of our movement.”
could possibly be considered as a direct influence: I am referring to two wooden pieces In any event, there are a couple of works that pre-announce the coplanar mode:
by Torres-García executed in 1929. The Uruguayan master had arrived in Paris in 1926, one of them is Lidy Prati’s Concreto from 1945, an oil on wood that belongs to a
whereupon he had immediately embarked on a process of anxious updating of his private collection [cat. 48]. It appears as a fresh and inventive deconstruction of ‘a
work. It was a moment of agitated and fluctuating artistic experiences—“primitivist” Mondrian’ in which the frame has been done away with. The other, even more strik-
paintings as well as others of cubist persuasion were produced at the same time as ing work I have in mind is Manuel Espinosa’s Untitled [cat. 43], also from 1945, an
the notable constructions with painted wood that embody some of his most salient oil on wood of polygonal contours whose pictorial plane has been pierced through by
achievements, namely the objets plastiques which often reflect the neo-plastic grid.16 two triangular cuts that offer a view of the supporting wall. This work was not framed
It was in the midst of this frenzied working context that Torres-García produced the either and I consider it of extreme importance because, as I see it, it is one of the first
wood pieces to which I am referring. One of them, Planes of Color [fig. 4] , belongs examples—if not the first—in which the pictorial plane was literally opened, a practice
to a private collection in Germany, while the other, Wood Construction with Planes of which, starting from different conceptualizations, would later be carried out by Lucio
Color [fig. 5] , is part of the collection of the Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza. Fontana in Italy when he punctured holes (buchi) or inflicted cuts (tagli) to the canvas
Both works evince a Mondrianesque grid and date from the year in which he met in the late 1940s and 1950s, or like the openings presented by Frank Stella’s shaped
the Dutch artist. However, the support is no longer a conventional rectangle for, as canvases of the early 1960s.
Torres-García proceeded to cut the pictorial plane out following the logic of the grid, It was in 1948, when Maldonado returned from Europe (where he had met Max
he went, at least momentarily, much further than Mondrian. In fact, both works clearly Bill and Georges Vantongerloo), that he articulated the doctrinarian turnaround: back
anticipate the polygonal shape of the pictorial plane following the inner composition of to the rectangular picture, he called out. A return that meant the—in my view—un-
the painting, or “structured frame” in Rothfuss’s words. Unfortunately these experi- fortunate abdication of the most creative and innovative experiences carried out by
ments by Torres-García had no follow up; on the whole, these two works appear as this group. Next, they started emulating or paraphrasing the concrete art of its ‘pope’,
one of the many avenues the artist was exploring17 until he finally developed his own namely, the Swiss Max Bill: the group’s affiliation with the established Max Bill aes-
idiosyncratic brand of constructivism at the beginning of the following decade. thetics gave it the definitive respectability and decorum that not only in Argentina, but
Certainly Rothfuss could have seen these works: there are two photographs of in all of Latin America, is gained by any artistic movement backed up by hegemonic
Torres-García in his studio in Montevideo in which he appears surrounded by wooden models.
pieces and Pre-Columbian objects. Hence, it is possible to infer—as Cecilia de Torres Thus the inventiveness of the irregular or shaped frame, followed by the copla-
does—that the artist held these works in great esteem. And, even though the wood nar painting, as well as Kosice’s sculptural forms executed after the publication of
compositions I am referring to do not appear in these pictures, they could very well Arturo—mainly his Röyi wood piece (1944) with articulated members whose position
have been hanging on another wall of the studio. Moreover, it is well established that could be manually modified by the viewer—as well as those he constructed with neon
not only had the works arrived in Uruguay when Torres-García left Europe, but also tubes—which, even when dated in 1953, as Pérez-Barreiro does based on the avail-
that both Rothfuss and Arden Quin visited Torres-García’s studio in 1943 and 1944.18 able documentation, long predate subsequent experiences by Stephen Antonakos,
Again, if Rothfuss saw these works, how come he did not embrace a more abstract Chryssa, and Bruce Nauman in the United States21—all of these path-breaking experi-
conception? Or did he perhaps see them and only thought of them in terms of theory ences remained in semi-darkness until relatively recent times.22
rather than praxis?
During the 1945–46 time span, the practice of the “irregular frame” was general-
ized in both shores of the Río de la Plata. In 1946, however, Buenos Aires witnessed
the beginning of a series of experiences involving the treatment of the pictorial
plane that took as a springboard a criticism of the seminal idea of the irregular or
shaped frame. In the above-mentioned essay from 1946, Maldonado states: “We
re-initiated an in-depth study of the ‘cut out’ frame or picture [concluding that] this
methodology spatialized the plane: the floodgates were open and the space pen-
etrated into the plane.” Even though he writes in the first person plural, it is well

Fig. 3. László Peri, Three-

Part Space Construction,
1923. Painted cement, 60
x 68 cm (23 ⅝ x 26 ¾ in.)
[part 1]; 55.5 x 70 cm (21 ⅞
x 27 ½ in.) [part 2]; 58 x 68
cm (22 ⅞ x 26 ¾ in.) [part
3]. Lehmbruck Museum,
Duisbug, Alemania.
Inv. 2911/1987.

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 Although I am forced to drastically synthesize the narrative that follows, it is impor-
tant to follow the footsteps of the “irregular frame” after its arrival in Europe, for the
achievements of the geographically-distanced Rio de la Plata avant-garde abstraction-
ists were presented in Paris towards the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the
1950s, at a time when the French capital was still holding on to the last vestiges of
its traditional hegemony. That is to say, they “were seen” in Paris, but the reactions
before the works of these unknown South American artists—when they were taken
into account at all—were mostly of a benevolent paternalism.
However, beyond a handful of disoriented critics, they were also seen by an artist
whose work pioneered the development of what was later called the “shaped can-
vas” in the United States. I am referring to Ellsworth Kelly.
In 1948, Kosice sent a numerous representation of Madí art to the Third Salon des
Réalités Nouvelles. In the well-known photograph of the Argentinian pavilion [fig. 6], it
is possible to see a crowded display of “irregular frame” works (the ones by Rothfuss
occupy the central area).
Arden Quin too had arrived in Paris in 1948.23 There it took him no time to re-
constitute a Madí group under his aegis and in 1950 he exhibited under that title
at the Galerie Colette Allendy with Gregorio Vardánega, a group of Peruvian artists
(among them the notable late poet and avant-garde artist Jorge Eielson), and the Fig. 6. Display of Madí
French Roger Desserprit. From then on he became closely associated with a group irregular frame works
of young Venezuelan art students (Alejandro Otero, Mateo Manaure, Rubén Núñez, selected to represent
and Narciso Debourg). The following year, Otero, this time together with Jesús Soto, Argentina at the Third Salon
Guevara, and Núñez, took part in the exhibition Espace-Lumière organized by Arden des Réalités Nouvelles,
Quin at the Galerie Suzanne Michel, which also included Jack Youngerman, a close Paris, 1948
friend of Kelly’s.
In August of the following year, the Galería Cuatro Muros in Caracas organized the
Primera Exposición Internacional de Arte (First Exhibition of International Art) in which,
together with Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto, Narciso Debourg, Rubén Núñez, and
Mateo Manaure, Arden Quin, Jack Youngerman, and Ellsworth Kelly also appeared.
The exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: The Years in France, 1948–195424—which originated
at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1992 in Paris and later that year traveled
to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.—could have been the occasion to
highlight this momentary interaction between artists from North and South America.
Nevertheless it turned out be a missed opportunity: the essays as well as the chro-
nology did nothing but reinforce the official story of Kelly’s art, obviously a North
American production that, by now, appears to have been carved in stone for posterity.
In fact, the historical scope of his connection or familiarity with the South American
artists has been reduced in the chronology25 to a brief citation of the exhibition at the
Galería Cuatro Muros in Caracas. So brief, in fact, that it fails to mention the South
American artists participating in the show, in spite of the fact that it was celebrated
in Caracas (!). In short, all of these texts restate the already well-known basic tenets
of Kelly’s abstraction: the search for, and adoption of, ‘ready made’ motifs in empiri-
cal reality,26 appropriations all of them that were executed on either wood panels or
canvases of regular, rectangular formats.

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 That is why it is so intriguing that in the spring of 1950 Kelly produced Window V, a 3 For a revealing and updated study of the subject, see Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason
work that is generally considered the first in the sequence of North American “shaped (London - New York: Verso, 2005). Laclau confronts the deep-seated pejorative view that the
canvases”. This work was realized on a modest-sized wood panel shaped as an air- term “populism” has acquired in the light of European or North American liberal democratic
plane wing, with horizontal black bars on a white background. According to Kelly, this discourses stating that, precisely, populism enlarges and guarantees the meaning of a true
piece was also inspired by a play of light and night shadows projected on the wall of democracy by being immediately receptive to the needs of the masses. In an interview pub-
his room. Therefore, if the appropriation procedure that Kelly followed was analogous lished in Buenos Aires’s La Nación in 2005, he concludes with a statement I fully endorse:
to all of the preceding ones, why did he opt for a cut-out support in this case, whereas “Peronism represented an enormous step forward for the participation of the masses in the
all the others had been developed on regular formats? Because in May of the same political system. Maybe it was not the best one. One imagines it could have adopted more
year, 1950—precisely in the Parisian spring—Arden Quin had exhibited his works on democratic forms, but it was what was historically possible … The oligarchic regime (of
découpé panels in the Galerie Colette Allendy. Had Kelly seen this exhibition before openly fraudulent origin, I might add) which existed before seems to me no better.”
he started to work on Window V? Or did he operate independently, albeit simultane- 4 According to the title page and contents, Arturo’s publication is dated “summer of 1944.”
ously? In truth, this cannot be ascertained here beyond the shadow of a doubt. Yet, I Therefore, it is possible to ascertain that if it came out around February-March of that year
cannot stop from being intrigued by the appearance of this (single) cut-out panel work (the austral summer, unlike the northern one, straddles between two years: it starts on
in Kelly’s French output of that time. December 21 and ends on March 21 of the following year), Rothfuss had, at the very least,
In any event—and to conclude—I think it is quite evident by now that, as I an- the whole of the previous year, 1943, to think out—and practice—a type of painting that
ticipated at the beginning, during the period that goes from the mid-1940s to 1950, broke with the centuries-old tradition of the rectangular canvas. In a later essay, “A propósito
in the remote capitals of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, there was an effervescent del marco” (A Propos of the Frame), published in issue 4 of the Arte Madí Universal maga-
and unprecedented impetus to radically renovate the acquired tradition of geometric zine (Buenos Aires, 1950), Rothfuss maintains that he had already attempted to overcome
abstraction. The first among the rare exceptions we find in Latin American art in which the problem of the orthogonal frame or “window” in 1941.
the reception of the dominant models becomes critical and transformative, that is to 5 See Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
say, when the influence is returned as a creative metamorphosis. The evidence can- 6 According to Mario Sagradini, Rothfuss authored his own “obscurity” for, quite determinedly,
not be contested, but rewriting the hegemonic narrative of the modernist canon is he kept a low profile, avoiding the friction of the “warring” artistic factions and shunning all
another story. kinds of media exposure. See his “Rhod Rothfuss: Un fantasma recorre Madí” (A Ghost
New York 2002-Segovia 2010 Walks through Madí) [exh catalogue] , in Arte Madí (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía, 1997).
ENDNOTES 7 Pérez-Barreiro has concluded that, in what respects Rothfuss’s oeuvre, barely ten or so of his
paintings, a small number of drawings, and a sculpture that can be indisputably attributed to
1 See Pérez-Barreiro’s “Buenos Aires: Rompiendo el Marco” in Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, ed., him have survived. See “The Negation of All Melancholy” (reprint Edition Galerie von Bartha,
The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Basel, 1994), 9.
Collection (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2007), as well as his “The Negation of 8 A work that today belongs in the Patricia Phelps Cisneros Collection, it was first illustrated
All Melancholy,” in David Elliot, ed., Art from Argentina, 1920–1994 (Oxford: The Museum in the catalogue of the exhibition curated by Mario Gradowczyk and Nelly Perazzo, Abstract
of Modern Art, 1994). See also Agnès de Maistre, “Les groupes Arte Concreto-Invención et Art from the Río de la Plata: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1933–1953 (New York: Americas
Madí,” in Art d’Amérique Latine 1911–1968 (Paris: Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, Society, 2001), 135.
1992). These texts are foundational of a rigorous historiography on the subject. 9 She is referring to the first exhibition held by the whole group at the house of the noted
2 Counteracting those popular marches, there were others, no less vibrant, summoning vast psychoanalyst Enrique Pichon-Rivière in Buenos Aires (October 8, 1945). She rests on the
sectors of the middle class and students that opposed Perón’s politics by exaggerating to testimony of Arden Quin (whose indiscriminate use she later deplored, given the artist’s
the hilt his former fascist sympathies, thus brandishing the flags of “liberty and democracy.” deliberate refashioning of historical facts) and points to the photograph in which the exhibi-
I clearly remember a photograph (published by the daily La Nación) that spoke volumes on tors appear together as the only documentary support. According to de Maistre, the painting
the Argentinean cultural fracture exacerbated by the outburst of Perón’s massive following. appears in the background between Pichon-Rivière and the dancer Renate Schottelius, but
There, in the front row of the rally, marching arm in arm, were Spruille Braden (the United the polygonal frame is not clearly visible.
States ambassador whose intrusive and bullying behavior is memorable), conservative and 10 Mario Gradowczyk and Nelly Perazzo, Abstract Art from the Río de la Plata, 52
Radical Civic Union politicians, and socialist (the flamboyant Alfredo Palacios, most conspicu- 11 See Charles Green Shaw, “The Plastic Polygon,” Plastique 3 (Paris, 1938), cited by Mary Kate
ously) and (Stalinist) communist leaders. (It might very well be that I was behind them, O’Hare in “Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s–50s,” central
among the rallying students, in my teenager years). essay in the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name (Newark: Newark Museum, 2010),

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 20 and plate 4. Here it is worth noting that in the Societé Anonyme Collection, formed by exchanges from which emerged the idea of the publication of Arturo (it is estimated that
Katherine Dreier (more often than not following the advise of Marcel Duchamp), there is a these meetings took place around mid-1943).
work by László Peri—to whom I refer below—titled Room (Space Construction), dated 1920– 15 Revista de Arte Concreto-Invención 1 (Buenos Aires, 1946).
21, realized on a support with a polygonal frame. In it, the formal arrangement, which does 16 This whole fascinating creative process has been shown for the first time in the splendid ex-
not coincide with the shape of the perimeter, suggests an architectural space (the “room” hibition Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood, curated by Mari-Carmen
of the title). One would be inclined to suppose that Shaw got to know Peri’s work, since the Ramírez and held at The Menil Collection in Houston (2009); the uniqueness of these “plastic
Societé Anonyme Collection was repeatedly exhibited in New York, starting in 1920. As far objects” was finally the subject of a specific theoretical study, adequately treated as “semi-
as I am concerned, in Peri’s work, as much as in Shaw’s, the open figural allusions indicate a nal”—albeit not “central”—within, though somehow foreign to, the modernist canon.
scarcely elaborate conviction regarding the meaning of an abstract, self-referential painting. 17 In fact, up until the Houston exhibition, both works had remained in relative obscurity.
As we saw before, Rothfuss’s proposal was, in this sense, impeccably cogent. Mario Gradowczyk illustrated the one in the German collection in his essay “Torres-García:
12 According to Margit Rowell, Katherine Dreir acquired two works by Peri at the Galerie Der un constructor con maderas,” in the catalogue of the show Aladdin Toys: Los juguetes de
Sturm for the Societé Anonyme (one of them must have been the one I already mentioned). Torres-García, IVAM Centre Julio González, 1997; and I exhibited the piece belonging to the
See Margit Rowell, The Planar Dimension: Europe 1912–1932 (New York: The Guggenheim Baroness Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Abstraction: The Amerindian Paradigm, the exhi-
Museum, 1979), 135. bition I curated for the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the IVAM Centre Julio González
13 Mentioned by Margit Rowell, The Planar Dimension, 135. On the contrary, it is impossible— in Valencia, 2001, in whose main essay I anticipated the critical evaluation that I make here.
and I find it improbable—to assert that images of Charles Green Shaw might have arrived 18 The catalogue raisonné of his wood pieces, compiled by Cecilia de Torres, is in the last
at that time at Río de la Plata. It was only in 1956 that Gyula Kosice organized at the Galería stages of preparation. I also owe her this information extracted from Torres-García’s diary:
Bonino in Buenos Aires an exhibition of international geometric abstraction featuring works “March 17, 1943: visit of Rothfuss and disciples … May 7 and 9, 1944: visited by Arden Quin
by some of the members of the American Abstract Artists, the group to which Shaw be- and Rothfuss … May 15, 1944: visit of Rothfuss.” These dates are critical, for the visits to
longed—although his work was not exhibited in that show. I understand that before that Torres-García’s studio are made precisely around the time of the theoretical and practical
date, in the 1930s and 1940s, the exchange of information on the arts was made almost gestation of the first “irregular frame” works.
exclusively with Europe from both North and South America, rather than between the coun- 19 According to Pérez-Barreiro, Molenberg’s Función blanca from 1946 was the first coplanar
tries of the Americas. work.
14 It is quite possible, since there had been a friendly relationship between the artists: both 20 That is to say, geometrically cut-out shapes hang separately yet remain on the same virtual
participated in the meetings at the now disappeared Café Rubí in Buenos Aires, the lively plane, while the supporting wall appears in between.

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21 Regarding the use of neon tubes, in the above-mentioned essay by Mario Gradowczyk and might have taken an interest in seeing the Réalités Nouvelles exhibition of 1948 (or so we
Nelly Perazzo there are references to pioneering experiences by László Moholy-Nagy and the are led to believe). See the chronology in the catalogue of the exhibition of his years in Paris,
Czech artist Zdenek Pesanek carried out in the 1920s and 1930s. However, there is no inquiry mentioned ahead.
into whether Kosice might have known these experiences. 24 Yve-Alain Bois, Jack Cowart and Alfred Pacquement, eds., Ellsworth Kelly: Les années fran-
22 It has been only in recent years that several exhibitions have brought to the attention of the çaices, 1948–1954 (Paris: Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, 1992); Ellsworth Kelly: The
mainstream historical consciousness the achievements of these South American artists. Years in France, 1948–1954 (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1992).
Among them, I would like to mention the already cited Abstract Art from the Río de la Plata: 25 A true disillusion, it has been compiled, to a large degree, on the basis of the artist’s recol-
Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1933–1953, held at the Americas Society in New York in lections as told to Ms Nathalie Brunet. Yve-Alain Bois, Jack Cowart and Alfred Pacquement,
2001, which, as its title indicates, was limited to artists from Buenos Aires and Montevideo. eds., Ellsworth Kelly: Les années françaices, 1948–1954 (Paris: Galerie nationale du Jeu
Instead, The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art From the Patricia Phelps de de Paume, 1992); Ellsworth Kelly: The Years in France, 1948–1954 (Washington, D.C.: The
Cisneros Collection, curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, then curator of Latin American art National Gallery of Art, 1992).
at the Blanton Museum, University of Texas in Austin, and which later traveled to the Grey 26 Such as grids that stem from tiling arrangements; or shadows cast by railings on a stairway;
Art Gallery, NYU, showcased a more comprehensive view of South American geometric or stonework lay outs; or window configurations (as in the well-known Window: Museum of
abstraction in 2007. And more recently (February 2010), Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art Modern Art Paris from 1949) and the like; or a parallel line on which Kelly worked, that is, the
from South and North America, 1920s–50s, held at the Newark Museum in New Jersey use of chance to arrange square pieces of colored paper in grid compositions.
and curated by Mary Kate O’Hare, presented a comparative view of abstraction across the 27 By express wish of the author, many of the words which would normally appear in brackets
Americas. A propos of this, Holland Cotter, of the influential New York Times, said “the South are presented here in italics. [Ed.]
Americans … take the prize for inventiveness.” More than sixty years had to pass before
such an assessment was possible.
23 1948 is also the year of the arrival of Ellsworth Kelly to Paris, as G.I. bill recipient. When he
arrived in the French capital his most admired artists were Picasso and Max Beckman, and
one of the first things he did was to travel to Colmar to see Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece,
which he saw as related to those modern masters. Indeed, not only upon his arrival in France
but also during the first long months of his stay his work was unabashedly figurative and
he appeared disdainful of contemporary art (abstraction); so it is highly improbable that he

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42

Fundación Juan March

 Magazines,
Exhibitions,
and Biennials:
Snapshots
of Abstraction
In Argentina
and Brazil
MARÍA AMALIA GARCÍA

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P
hotography is a recording of times past: the fact that gained among South American artists. Abstract art was in the process of becoming
the subject of a photographic image once stood be- synonymous with modern art.
fore the lens is beyond question. A fraction in time Artistic exchange between Argentina and Brazil accelerated in 1953, a crucial year
and space, photography is in reality the imprint left for cultural and institutional relations. A shift in debate among Argentine-Brazilian in-
by a single, brief moment. These are the scraps of tellectuals was triggered by the involvement of Argentine inventionist artists in the
information a snapshot provides. Previous or past II Bienal de São Paulo. While intellectual circles focused their discussion on abstract
events are not reflected in a still picture, nor are the art, at an institutional level the event represented an opportunity to reinforce cultural
photographer’s or the subject’s intentions. The full exchange between both countries. For all that, what exactly was so important about
meaning of an image can only be grasped once it is the Argentine representation sent to the II Bienal? What is the significance behind
bound within certain limits, that is, when it is con- Kosice’s satisfaction, Prati’s joy, and Pedrosa’s contemplative delight? These modern
trasted with other sources. This essay will therefore artists had experienced late success in Argentina. Therefore, the recognition achieved
use two photographs as a starting point in the study at the show—an opportunity to encounter international forms of modern art—may
of events surrounding the II Bienal de São Paulo, have signaled the triumph of abstract art over the artistic agenda drawn out by Peron’s
organized by the Museu de Arte Moderna de São cultural program. On the other hand, the event proved Argentine abstract-concrete
Paulo (MAM-SP) in 1953. Reconstructing the context initiatives dominated the local art scene, becoming a discursive practice in the mid-
in which these pictures were taken will shed light on a crucial episode in the history 1940s. From that moment on, this feeling of anticipation prompted numerous ex-
of Argentine-Brazilian relations and abstract art. amples of concrete art in Argentina.
In the first photograph [fig. 1] , Gyula Kosice, leader of the Madí group from The launch of the journal Arturo: Revista de Artes Abstractas [cat. 63, 64] in 1944
Buenos Aires, stands proudly outside Argentina’s exhibition section. Behind the marked an important moment in the abstract art debate in Buenos Aires. Carmelo
young, ground-breaking artist it is possible to see several of the panels that organize Arden Quin, Rhod Rothfuss, Gyula Kosice, and Edgar Bayley were on the editorial
the different areas of the exhibition space located in the massive grounds of Parque do board of the first and only issue of Arturo. In addition to its cutting-edge supporters, the
Ibirapuera, designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the occasion. Kosice has his back turned periodical featured pieces by “renowned avant-garde artists” who had played an ac-
to the sign reading “Argentina,” and his work, Levitación en espiral (Spiral Levitation), tive part in renewing the arts during the early twentieth century. Contributors included
stands right behind him, framed by Julián Althabe’s sculptures. Kosice’s pose and Joaquín Torres-García, Vicente Huidobro, Murilo Mendes, and Maria Helena Vieira da
expression seem to convey his satisfaction given this important achievement; the Silva. It also featured reproductions of works by Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian.
photograph, taken on such a noteworthy occasion, denotes a certain sense of pride. The magazine’s red cover was designed by Tomás Maldonado, while the interior vi-
The second photograph [fig. 2] was taken inside the Argentine exhibition sec- gnettes were created by Lidy Prati. Her project was based on what the journal defined
tion and shows two works in the display by Lidy Prati, Vibración al infinito (Vibration as invencionismo (inventionism), a new approach to the aesthetic experience from
to Infinity) and Referencia sensible de un espacio definido (Sensitive Reference of a conceptual viewpoint. Invencionsimo favored independence and inventive qualities
a Defined Space). Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa and Argentine painter Miguel over descriptive elements. Similarly, the artist’s capacity to discern new forms of artistic
Ocampo appear to be observing the works along with the concrete artist and a mutual invention was emphasized. Although the group Arturo began to disintegrate practically
friend. Ocampo’s abstract paintings also represented Argentina at the biennial. The at the same time it came into existence, the magazine represented a cluster of ideas
Argentine representation, sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Perón’s gov- in the making at an embryonic stage. Arturo marked the beginning of abstract-concrete
ernment, intended to summarize the development of contemporary art in Argentina art in Argentina, as confirmed by both the history of local art and the groups that de-
by selecting a large number of abstract artists to represent the country. rived from the magazine, such as the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (Concrete-
The Argentine delegation was housed, together with other American countries, at Invention Art Association, AACI), the Madí group, and perceptismo (perceptism).1
the Pabellón de los Estados (Pavilion of States) [fig. 3, 4]—one of the buildings form- Although literary and artistic circles had supported these trends since the mid-
ing the architectural complex designed by Niemeyer, in which a dynamic and flexible 1940s, the incorporation of abstract art in Buenos Aires’s institutional framework led
interplay of ramps created extraordinary interior spaces. The Argentine exhibition site to a certain degree of conflict. Tension arose between abstract artists and Perón’s ad-
and the adjacent Uruguayan section, together with the wide selection of works by ministration on account of the government’s cultural agenda—distanced from inno-
young Brazilian artists located on the lower floor, all bore witness to the large number vative proposals—and the Minister for Education’s statements at the Salón Nacional
of projects at the biennial linked to abstract art. Moreover, these three exhibition gal- exhibition in 1949 condemning abstract art. In line with artists’ perception of the situ-
leries attested to the variety of non-figurative styles practiced in the local art scene. ation, art history has perpetuated a negative image of Perón’s cultural policy, bent on
An overview of these galleries highlighted the widespread popularity abstraction had refusing to accept or even persecuting modern ideas.2 However, as Andrea Giunta has

PAGES 42–43:
Detail of CAT. 53 (p. 126) and
CAT. 122 (p. 190)

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Fundación Juan March

Fig. 1. Gyula Kosice in the pointed out, Peronism did not ban or systematically eliminate artworks, as happened in
Argentine exhibition section European regimes, but used a group of Argentine abstract artists at the II Bienal de São
of the II Bienal de São Paulo. Paulo to political effect in order to present the country to an international audience.3
Behind him, Levitación en Argentina had not been represented at the I Bienal held two years earlier, in
espiral (Spiral Levitation, 1951. On that occasion, the Peronist administration showed no interest in sending an
1953) by Kosice, and Argentine delegation to the Brazilian event. Neither did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Espacios asimétricamente collaborate with the Instituto de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, which, on its part, had
cruzados (Asymmetrically made an initial selection of works. In this sense, Argentina’s official involvement in the
Crossed Spaces, 1953) and II Bienal signaled the formation of new cultural and political alignments. It also high-
Pintura espacial (Spatial lighted the effect of the chance taken by the Brazilian state and middle class in terms
Painting, 1953) by Julián of its artistic strategy.4 Abstraction and internationalism were now key elements in the
Althabe. Arquivo Histórico fight for cultural hegemony in the region.5
Wanda Svevo. Fundação Argentina’s long-lasting cultural supremacy appeared to be fading, while Brazil
Bienal de São Paulo slowly secured its position as a model for South American countries thanks to a strong
cultural administration program that yielded new museums and a biennial dedicated
Fig. 2. Lidy Prati, Mário to the fine arts. A complex mechanism of cultural strategies was set into motion in
Pedrosa, Beba Dari Larguía, São Paulo. The Bienal made international art accessible to local artists and a wider
and Miguel Ocampo. Behind audience while promoting Brazilian art at a favorable time in terms of international
them, Vibración al infinito interest. Moreover, it profited from the symbolic significance of the city, represented
(Vibration to Infinity, 1953) by modern entrepreneurs and the National State. In short, the event defined Brazil’s
and Referencia sensible position in the region and established its cultural, political, and economic hegemony.6
de un espacio definido Vanguard artists in Buenos Aires were amazed by the events taking place in Brazil,
(Sensitive Reference of a which differed greatly from the situation in Argentina. Brazil became a point of ref-
Defined Space, 1953) by erence for these creators, a place in which to carry out a modern project in Latin
Lidy Prati. America. The interchange of ideas with Brazil was very appealing to Argentine art-
ists, since Perón’s government was not open to this kind of concepts at first and pri-
vate institutions, unlike those in Brazil, were not able to define a convincing program.
And while the possibility of putting forward modern projects increased in Brazil, all
Argentine artists could do was read about these activities in magazines.
The constant exchange of ideas between the inventionist avant-garde and Brazilian
artists dates back to the foundation of Arturo. Poet Murilo Mendes and artist Maria
Helena Vieira da Silva contributed to the issue following Carmelo Arden Quin and
Edgar Bayley’s trip to Rio de Janiero, prompted by their inquiry into new approaches to
modern art. Also playing a part in this interchange of ideas was Carlos Drummond de
Andrade’s article “Invencionsimo,” first published in Correio da Manhã on December
1, 1946, and featured the following year in the magazine Joaquim, printed in Curitiba.
Thanks to this network of artists, art forms produced by inventionist groups from

Fig. 3. View of Alexander

Calder’s exhibition in the
Pavilion of States, II Bienal
de São Paulo, 1953. Arquivo
Histórico Wanda Svevo.
Fundação Bienal de São
Paulo

Fig. 4. Pavilion of States.

Arquivo Histórico Wanda
Svevo. Fundação Bienal de
São Paulo

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Buenos Aires made their way to the poet Drummond de Andrade, who wrote a cri- growing number of pieces relating to constructivism and geometric abstraction were
tique on the “nova idéia de Buenos Aires.” As noted in Joaquim, AACI artist Raúl Lozza featured in Brest’s magazine, Ver y estimar (See and Appraise). In 1951, he was invited
joined a young generation of Brazilians in their opposition to José Bento Monteiro to the I Bienal de São Paulo as a member of the jury. As a representative and promoter
Lobato’s reactionary attitude. Kosice, on the other hand, came into contact with do- of Argentine concrete art, he sealed his commitment to the cause by awarding the
decaphonic composer Hans-Joachim Koellreutter and published his pieces, as well as Prize for Sculpture to Max Bill for Dreiteilige Einheit (Tripartite Unity) [fig. 9] . He was
correspondence in which they discussed matters related to dodecaphonic composition again invited as member of the jury to both the II and VI Bienal (1953, 1961), and he
[fig. 5] , in the magazine Arte Madí Universal. Like Maldonado, Kosice gave lectures gave a series of lectures in Rio and São Paulo. Brest’s active role in the Brazilian art
on Madí art as part of a course in modern art organized by the musician in Teresópolis. scene endorsed its presence in the international scene. His progressive ideas were a
The first institutional exchange between these two countries in the field of ab- source of legitimation for Brazilian institutions, which saw in his discourse the confir-
stract art occurred in the late 1940s. In 1949, the exhibition Do figurativismo ao ab- mation of their postwar initiatives supporting modern art. With the exception of Mário
straccionismo [fig. 6] marked the opening, on both sides of the border, of two reput- Pedrosa, who was pivotal in the reception and inclusion of abstract art in Brazil, art
edly modern institutions: the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP) and critics were reluctant to the idea of institutions promoting this sort of rhetoric.9
the Instituto de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (IAM) [fig. 7] . The latter developed Nonetheless, relations were restored following Jorge Romero Brest’s position as
strong ties with the MAM-SP and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). The IAM administrator of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires (MNBA) af-
held a series of lengthy negotiations with the MASP to take to Buenos Aires the ex- ter the fall of Perón’s government at the hands of the self-proclaimed “Revolución
hibition on Swiss concrete artist Max Bill previously held at the São Paulo museum Libertadora” (Liberating Revolution). Important achievements during Brest’s adminis-
in March 1951.7 Economic-, transport-, and customs-related difficulties hindered and tration included five exhibitions on Brazilian art and architecture at the MNBA and one
ultimately prevented the show from traveling to Argentina. exhibition on Argentine art at the MAM-RJ, held in 1961.10 Of all these shows, Arte
New bonds were built throughout the 1950s. In 1951, Tomás Maldonado took up moderno en Brasil (Modern Art in Brazil) was the most important in political terms: the
Koellreutter’s invitation and traveled to Brazil with his then-partner Lidy Prati. They exhibition saw the doors of the MNBA re-open under the new military government
visited the MASP in São Paulo with Pietro Maria Bardi, who showed them Bill’s works in June 1957.
prior to the opening of the exhibition. While in Rio, they met with the concrete avant- Arte moderno en Brasil was an Itamaray strategy aimed at gaining influence in the
garde: art critic Mário Pedrosa and artists Geraldo de Barros, Abraham Palatnik, Almir continent. The show summed up thirty-five years of Brazilian art, from the Semana del
Mavignier, and Ivan Serpa [fig. 8] . In addition to the Argentine representation sent 22 proposals to the latest tendencies in abstract art. The front cover of the catalogue
to the II Bienal in 1953, an exhibition focusing on the Group of Modern Artists from and exhibition poster featured a composition of small orange and green squares by
Argentina was held at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ). The Ivan Serpa [fig. 10] . Through this show—which traveled to Rosario, Santiago, and
group was formed by concrete artists (Maldonado, Alfredo Hlito, Prati, Enio Iommi, Lima—Brazil had high expectations of kindling interest in Brazilian art in neighbor-
and Claudio Girola) and independent abstract creators (Sarah Grilo, José Antonio ing countries. The continuous exhibition projects Brazil sought to stage outside its
Fernández Muro, Miguel Ocampo, and Hans Aebi). The lectures given by Maldonado borders, as well as the widespread coverage they received, are further evidence of
and art critic Jorge Romero Brest—author of the catalogue—had a profound impact the country’s quest for cultural hegemony. The construction of Brasilia under the gov-
on Rio’s art scene. ernment of Juscelino Kubitschek in 1956 is an indisputable sign of the effects mod-
Romero Brest was instrumental in establishing artistic relations between both ern art and architecture had on Brazil’s political and economic program following the
countries. His association with the cultural milieu in Brazil dated back to the 1940s, Second World War. On a regional level, Brazil’s cultural administration was regarded
following his involvement in anti-totalitarian cultural publications. In subsequent years, as a model in neighboring countries. A new cultural-political map had been drawn out
Brest wrote the book Pintura Brasileña Contemporánea (Contemporary Brazilian on South American soil: plans of cultural supremacy were thwarted for Buenos Aires,
Painting), published on the occasion of the exhibition Veinte artistas brasileños the “Paris of South America,” as the country on the tropical side of the border was
(Twenty Brazilian Artists), curated by Marques Rebêlo and held in Argentina in col- crowned leader of modern art.
laboration with Emilio Pettoruti, director of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de La
Plata.8 At the time, his preoccupations as an art critic focused on defining Argentina’s
artistic role within the broader context of Latin-American modernity.
However, towards the end of the 1940s, an event ignited a powerful shift in Romero
Brest’s critical viewpoint. During his third visit to Europe, he came into contact with
prominent abstract artists and began to exchange correspondence with Max Bill,
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, and Léon Degand, among others. Furthermore, a

Fig. 5. “Carta abierta de H.

J. Koellreutter” (Open Letter
by H. J. Koellreutter), Arte
Madí Universal 4 (October
1950)

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ENDNOTES

1 Nelly Perazzo, El arte concreto en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Gaglianone, 1983); Gabriel
Pérez-Barreiro, ed., The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros Collection (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2007); María Amalia
García, Abstracción entre Argentina y Brasil. Inscripción regional e interconexiones del arte
concreto (1944–1960) (PhD diss., Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos
Aires, forthcoming).
2 Nelly Perazzo, El arte concreto en la Argentina, 121–22; Nelly Perazzo, Vanguardias de la
década del 40. Arte Concreto-Invención, Arte Madí, Perceptismo, exh. cat. (Buenos Aires:
Museo Sívori, 1980), 10.
3 Andrea Giunta, Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política. Arte argentino en los años sesenta,
ch. 1 (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2001).
4 Aracy Amaral, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo. Perfil de um
acervo (São Paulo: Techint, 1988).
5 María Amalia García: “La construcción del arte abstracto. Impactos e interconexiones entre
el internacionalismo cultural paulista y la escena artística argentina 1949–1953,” in Arte ar-
gentino y latinoamericano del siglo XX. VII Premio Fundación Telefónica a la investigación de Fig. 6. Front cover of
la historia de las artes plásticas en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Fondo para la investigación del Do figurativismo ao
arte argentino [FIAAR]-Fundación Espigas, 2004), 17–54. abstracionismo. São Paulo:
6 For a discussion on the São Paulo biennials, see Bienal. 50 años 1951–2001 (São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna,
Fundação Bienal São Paulo, 2001); Paulo Herkenhoff, “A Bienal de São Paulo e seus com- 1949
promissos culturais e políticos,” Revista USP 52 (São Paulo, 2001–2002): 118–21; Francisco
Alambert and Polyana Canhête, As Bienais de São Paulo: da era do Museu à era dos curado- Fig. 7. Front cover of Arte
res 1951–2001 (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2004); Adele Nelson, “Monumental and Ephemeral: abstracto Buenos Aires:
The Early São Paulo Bienais,” in Mary Kate O’Hare, ed., Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in Instituto de Arte Moderno,
South and North America, 1920s–50s (Newark: Newark Museum, 2010), 127–42. July 1949
7 María Amalia García, “Max Bill on the Map of Argentine-Brazilian Concrete Art,” in Mari
Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, eds., Building on a Construct: The Adolpho Leirner Fig. 8. Group photograph
Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston: The taken at Mário Pedrosa’s
Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 53–68. studio, Rio de Janeiro, 1951.
8 Raúl Antelo, “Coleccionismo y modernidad: Marques Rebêlo, marchand d’art,” in Epílogos From left to right: De Barros,
y prólogos para un fin de siglo. VIII Jornadas de Teoría e Historia de las Artes (Buenos Aires: Palatnik, Pedrosa, Prati,
CAIA, 1999), 136–37; Patricia M. Artundo, Mário de Andrade e a Argentina: um país e sua Maldonado, Mavignier, and
produção cultural como espaço de reflexão (São Paulo: EDUSP-FAPESP, 2004). Serpa
9 Aracy Amaral, Arte para quê? A preocupação social na arte brasileira 1930–1970 (São Paulo:
Nobel, 2003), 229–63; Otília Arantes, Mário Pedrosa. Itinerário crítico (São Paulo: Scritta,
1991).
10 The following exhibitions were held at the museum: Arte moderno en Brasil (Modern Art
in Brazil), June 1957; Arquitectura brasileña (Brazilian Architecture), October 1958; Israel
visto por Portinari (Israel Seen through Portinari’s Eyes), May 1959; Roberto Burle Marx y
arquitectos asociados (Roberto Burle Marx and Associated Architects), November 1961;
and Wladyslaw, September 1963. The latter was dedicated to the graphic work of Anatol
Wladyslaw, a member of the Ruptura Group.

Fig. 9. Max Bill, Dreiteilige

Einheit (Tripartite Unity),
1947–48. Stainless steel,
Fig. 10. Cover by Ivan 100 x 90 x 117 cm (39 ⅜ x
Serpa for the exhibition 35 ⅜ x 46 ⅛ in.). Museu
catalogue Arte Moderno de Arte Contemporânea da
en Brasil, MNBA, Universidade de São Paulo 
June 1957

47

Fundación Juan March

48

Fundación Juan March

 From Construction
to Deconstruction
FERREIRA GULLAR

49

Fundación Juan March

T
oday a part of Brazil’s art history, concrete and neo- were greater, with a preponderant formalism prevailing in the elaboration of the po-
concrete art have been the subject of much reflec- ems of the first group, while the cariocas were more spontaneous, perhaps because
tion and many a publication, including surveys of they were less certain about the new poetry. And it was precisely among these poets
their role in art history. For specific reasons, critics that the estrangement occurred, a few months later, triggered by an article written by
and art lovers usually associate these two move- Haroldo de Campos, in which he announced the mathematical method for the future
ments as if one was a variant of the other, when in elaboration of concrete poetry. The group from Rio de Janeiro considered that this un-
fact they are contradictory and conflicting. dertaking was not viable, and decided to break off with the group. Indeed, the carioca
In a way, neo-concrete art could be regarded attitude already announced the path their experiences would take, relying primarily on
as anti-concrete, if it is taken into account that it subjectivity and the body rather than on objectivity and the mind. This was the first
emerged from the negative dialectics of concrete sign of what would later become known as neo-concrete art.
art. Notwithstanding, the former would not have ex- Here it should be observed that the generic designation of “paulista group” and
isted without the latter, precisely because the very “carioca group” did not reflect the individual characteristics of the artists that com-
expression “negative dialectics” implies involve- prised them. In point of fact, it must be said that not all São Paulo concrete artists
ment with what is denied. In fact, when concrete were in agreement with Waldemar Cordeiro’s theses. Just as one should not confuse
art emerged in Brazil in the early 1950s, it brought Fiaminghi with Sacilotto, or Nogueira Lima with Cordeiro, one should definitely not
about a break with the modernist tradition, whose hegemony had been intact since ignore the particular paths taken by Lothar Charoux and Willys de Castro. The carioca
1922. This rupture consisted in posing to the Brazilian artist new questions related to group was also made up of very distinctive personalities, such as Amilcar de Castro
artistic conception and artistic language, leaving aside the outdone values imposed by and Franz Weissmann, Palatnik and Carvão, Lygia Pape and Decio Vieira, Hélio Oiticica
modernism. In the place of national or regional themes and instead of a figurative lan- and Lygia Clark. Precisely for this reason, as time went by, each one of them gave a
guage, a rational, universal theme and a new geometric language. These were the new particular direction to his or her work. Lygia and Oiticica developed the expressive
proposals which, turning the issue of form into the very subject of the work of art, would potentialities latent in neo-concrete ideas to the full. Palatnik, more akin than his col-
trigger a radical aesthetic process that culminated in their negation. The emergence leagues to the technological features of mechanics, sought from early on to replace
of concrete poetry contributed to this in a decisive manner, extending to the literary virtual movement with real movement in his work, creating the aparelho cinecromati-
field proposals similar to those of the concrete movement in the plastic arts. Here, the co (Cinechromatic Machine) displayed at the I Bienal de São Paulo in 1951.
negative dialectics of the concrete vision also generated the search for new aesthetic In keeping with Max Bill’s conception, which had a considerable amount of influ-
solutions, which directly influenced the path of neo-concrete art. This will be clarified ence on all Brazilian artists, concrete art explored formal and chromatic variations
further ahead. without either symbolic or emotional implications. It freed itself from all subjectivity
The presence of “concrete” ideas in Brazil came about with a resumption of the and advanced the pure pleasure of seeing, as if the eye was captured by the two-
cultural exchange with Europe, which had been interrupted by the Second World War dimensional surface of a painting, with no other alternative than to travel across those
from 1939 to 1945. The end of the conflict heralded a wave of optimism and renewal two dimensions, moved by the energy of the field of vision. Charoux was the artist
that was reflected in the arts. The Max Bill exhibit in São Paulo, in 1949, established who best explored these possibilities, stressing line over color. One of the future al-
the first connection with the Ulm group, heir to some of the ideas of the Bauhaus and, ternatives of this language would be the optical art of Vasarely. Another option was ex-
particularly, the concepts established by Van Doesburg in his Manifesto of Concrete plored by Josef Albers with his virtual cubes, which inspired Lygia Clark to create her
Art, published in 1930.1 This new connection ended Brazilian art’s long dependence on modulated surfaces. Some of Weissmann’s sculptures of that time used serial forms,
the School of Paris. In São Paulo, Geraldo de Barros and Waldemar Cordeiro, among also examining optical effects; this was not the case with Amilcar, who was more
other artists, embraced the new artistic experience which, in Rio de Janeiro, under radical in his adoption of the essential form, in his case the two-dimensional plate,
the influence of Mário Pedrosa, mobilized young artists such as Ivan Serpa, Almir which he simply cut and folded. Amilcar’s experience was more independent from
Mavigner, and Abraham Palatnik. From the outset, however, there were differences imported concretism than that of his colleagues, and already contained the seeds
between the São Paulo and the Rio groups, the latter proving more eclectic, as wit- of a drive to outdo optical effects, as well as to explore the void, as testified by Bill’s
nessed by the composition of the Grupo Frente, which brought together artists of sculptures. This same radicalism, which turned the two-dimensional plaque into the
geometric as well as figurative or abstract-impressionist languages, and even naïve main element of his sculpture, prevented him from progressing further, as did Lygia
painters. São Paulo’s Ruptura group, on the other hand, was more coherent in its con- and Oiticica. Unlike them, Amilcar, instead of giving in to seeking the new for the sake
cretist option. This might explain the factional development of concrete ideas in each of the new, preferred to explore all the possibilities of the path he had chosen. Less in-
of these two groups. But this rift would only become evident at a later date, when flexible, Weissmann also adopted the virtual characteristics of the concrete language
the birth of concrete poetry infused new vigor into the movement, giving rise to the in his dialectic exploration of the plane and empty space, adding color to this dialogue.
I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta, opened in São Paulo in December 1956, and It is common knowledge that concrete painting derives from the constructive
transferred to Rio de Janeiro in February of the following year. The display of the works avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, which appeared as alternatives to the fig-
of the two groups in a single exhibit revealed the differences between them. urative language disassembled by cubism. The task faced by some painters, such as
At that point, the disparities among the works themselves were still subtle, being Malevich, consisted in imbuing with spiritual content a non-figurative language which,
more evident in the texts accompanying the exhibit, both in relation to the plastic arts further, was not attached to any imaginary of metaphysical reference; in other words,
and to poetry. In the plastic arts, the geometric language was common to all works, how to transcend the play of formal relations and mere visual colors. Kandinsky tried
but demonstrated a more objective elaboration in the paulistas (São Paulo group). In to provide an answer in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art; and Malevich in su-
poetry, the differences between the paulistas and the cariocas (Rio de Janeiro group) prematism, which intended to express the “sensibility of an object’s absence.” Such

PAGES 48–49:
Detail of CAT. 137 (p. 208)

50

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concerns led him to paint white on white, and then to proceed to his suprematist wood plaques, paint pistols, liquid paints, and instead of painting, materially charging
architectures, built with colored plaques in a three-dimensional space. at the picture, turned into the object of the painting. At first, she stuffed the support
This same type of problem presented itself to the concrete movement, and par- and created casulos (cocoons), and then abandoned the picture and built, with metal
ticularly to Lygia Clark, who tried to overcome the two-dimensionality of the canvas plaques, a new, three-dimensional object in real space, but which was not a sculpture,
with virtual Albersian volumes. Following this, when faced with a blank canvas she since it was born from the painting, from the crisis of pictorial language, from the
adopted an attitude even more drastic than Malevich’s: instead of working the canvas deconstruction of easel painting, and which I named “non-object.”
as a virtual space, she attacked it in its materiality: cutting it, stuffing it, and then de- Hélio did not follow the same path as Lygia when he exchanged the canvas for con-
constructing it and transforming it into what she called a bicho (creature), which was structions of painted wood (overlapping planes that created hidden spaces) suspended
a tree-dimensional object that could be handled, built with articulated plaques and in space, and which he named contrarevelos (counter-reliefs), in reference to the sus-
hinges, which slid over one another. pended constructions created by Vladimir Tatlin in Russia in the 1910s. The next step was
To better understand what happened in neo-concrete art we need to turn to the the creation of bolides (meteoric fireballs) and ninhos (nests), followed by the parangolé,
work of the [concrete] poets, who were not limited to the “verbivocovisual” (verbal- with which he exceeded the limits of the plastic language to enter the field of hap-
vocal-visual) compositions of the São Paulo group, but rather chose other paths that penings. I believe the bolides were Hélio Oiticica’s borderline creations where, joining
assigned greater value to the book than to the page as the vehicle for the poem. This rational shapes (cubes) and rags, in a reference to viscera, he reached the critical point
led to the birth of the livro poema (book poem), created by me in 1959, and whose of contradiction that impelled neo-concrete art (body and mind, reason and sensation)
influence on the unfolding of the entire movement was decisive, by introducing the and, not outdoing it, escaped by discarding it. The parangolé is essentially this; a leap
participation of the spectator (in this case, the reader) in the work of art, which is a toward gratuitous action, the dance of a shape in space. Oiticica freed himself from mak-
particular trait of neo-concrete art. This is an aspect that critics have failed to address, ing [things], freed himself from object-works, and became the instigator of sensations.
precisely because the “book-poem” was scarcely publicized and rarely shown to the While it is true that concrete painters, both in São Paulo and in Rio, found in the
public. However, if we give it some thought, nothing is more logical than to deduct concrete vocabulary their own expression—of which I note the innovations of Willys
that this participation should have been born from the book, which could itself be de Castro with his objetos ativos (active objects); Aloisio Carvão with his cubo-cor
handled. From the “book-poem” I moved on to “spatial poems”—“object poems” (cube-color); and Palatnik with his quadros-mobiles (mobile-paintings)—it was with
built of wood—which forced spectators to use their hands to discover the hidden neo-concrete art that the Brazilian constructive experience of the 1950s and 1960s
word under a cube or under a plaque. Subsequently, I invented the Poema Enterrado led this new language beyond the limits up to then observed by the avant-garde.
(Buried Poem), which consisted of a room built underground, accessible via stairs; in- Already the Teoria do não-objeto (1959), by proposing this new designation for neo-
side the room-poem there were loose cubes inside one another, with only one word, concrete works, ratified the obsoleteness of names such as painting, sculpture, and
revealed through the handling of the cubes. This poem was built in the house of Hélio even “work of art” to designate the new creations of the group. This was a confir-
Oiticica, who was filled with enthusiasm by it, seeing that poem as a step forward in mation and, at the same time, an indication of the potential changes that could be
neo-concrete experience: manual participation was substituted by corporal participa- brought about by the new proposals, especially as far as the poets and Lygia and
tion, since the “reader” was induced to walk into the poem. From this poem came the Oiticica were concerned.
stimulus that led Lygia and Hélio to future experiments with “relational objects” and In poetry, the neo-concrete experience practically came to an end after the Buried
the labyrinths of the “caes de caça” [hunting dogs] project. Poem, while most sculptor painters of the group deepened in their own search, ex-
The influence exerted by poets on artists, and by artists on poets, was a con- ploring the path that each had found, but still maintaining the traditional support. Lygia
stant in the neo-concrete movement. The group members met frequently at Mário and Oiticica, on the other hand, completely abandoned traditional means and proce-
Pedrosa’s or Lygia Clark’s apartment in order to find out what each was doing, talk, dures to venture into uncharted terrain. With her “relational objects,” Lygia gave up
and exchange ideas about the work in progress. There is no doubt that, without this creating works of art—objects for contemplation—to invite people, instead, to handle
continuous interchange, neo-concrete art would not have had the same scope of pro- certain objects, such as masks, gloves, tubes, etc. which, according to her, owing to
posals and achievements. Most of the fundamental ideas of the movement, expressed the unusual character of the experience, would provoke repressed or subconscious
in the Neo-concrete Manifesto and the Teoria do não-objeto [Non-object theory], were impulses in them, revealing their deep inner self. She called this experience the
a product of these meetings and discussions, but also—and fundamentally—from the “structuring of the self.” With his parangolé, Oiticica intended to arouse in those who
reflection about the works produced. Unlike most avant-garde movements, whose used it a new perception of the body and of the moving cape.
theories intended to serve as guidelines or pledges for the future, the theory of the The neo-concrete movement produced works of art and a theory which have
neo-concrete movement came after the works, arising from them, even if, after being come to be recognized as significant contributions to contemporary art.
conceived, it naturally influenced artistic creation. It derived from the very nature of
the movement, based more on creative intuition than on precepts and formulas, which
explains the variety of new accomplishments and proposals espoused by the group.
And yet, the importance of the theory factor in the development of neo-concrete Revised and corrected edition of the original translation from the Portuguese made by Agnes
art should not be underestimated, since without it Lygia and Hélio would hardly have L. Velloso, published in Arte concreta e neoconcreta, da construção à deconstrução / Concrete
broken the limits of the canvas or undertaken an adventure that would lead them to and Neo-concrete Art, from Construction to Deconstruction (São Paulo: DAN Galeria, exhibition
experiences that had nothing to do with issues pertaining to the plastic arts them- catalogue October 4 – November 4, 2006). [Ed.]
selves. I believe that the new rupture started when Lygia decided to put aside the
traditional tools of the painter (inks, brushes, and canvases) and the conventional be-
havior of the artist (to create compositions of forms and colors) in order to use ply-

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 Notes on the
Constructivist
Art Scene
in Venezuela,
1950–1973
LUIS PÉREZ-ORAMAS

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To Ariel Jiménez

I.
Geometric abstraction is on the verge of becoming a Latin-American stereo- This petty idea of Latin-American geometric abstraction as a vast repertoire of or-
type, a sort of symbolic umbrella term used to identify, in an unresolved and naments disguises an unfounded contempt for the notion of “ornament,” paramount in
unsatisfactory manner, a fraction of a continent and a period of time. In a simi- understanding any type of symbolic strategy that has taken place in the “long-drawn-
lar vein, this is what happened with muralism in shaping an idea of Mexico, or out course” of the history of art. Those who stigmatize the historic events linked to
what continues to occur in certain dominant cultural scenes that, driven by exoticism, geometric abstraction in Latin America fall prey to a historicist, Eurocentric, and often
link carnival, tropicália (tropicalism), and antropofágia (cannibalism) to the imaginary of unnoticed form of fundamentalism according to which shapes must be original, thus
Brazil.1 The stereotype of geometric abstraction is suspect in more than one way. On avoiding the risk of being a mere derivative of form. This position rejects the multiple
the one hand, there is the problem of its limited scope, since this art movement only layers of temporality that come with the resurgence of form, as forms survive (while
flourished with a significant degree of stability and symbolic relevance in a small num- living within) a process of continuous deformation and are altered by the passage of
ber of countries in Latin America. On the other, this stereotype is also questionable time and change of place in their unavoidable transformation into “alter-forms.”2
when it serves the purpose of restoring the myth of universalism, frequently used These “alter-forms”—understood as altered forms of modernity, or, as in this
to justify the practice of non-objective abstraction. As a result, those who exploit the case, an altered constructivism—flourished in certain parts of Latin America during
beauty of this aphasic rhetoric in order to build a collective stereotype tend to ignore the twentieth century and served as “symbolic agents” in the fulfillment of collec-
its tacit political and anthropological implications, which were and continue to be em- tive expectations referred to modernization. In other words, their “symbolic location”
bodied by the geometric abstract art forms produced in these countries. on the broad map of what is known as the modern Latin-American project, from the
All artistic forms involve politics—often to their regret—and, consequently, all realm of utopia to the cautious coordinates of the infrastructure where it material-
forms of politics reveal, withhold, or disguise the politics of form, even when they izes, took place (in a play of words) “in place of modernity.” Therefore, these forms—
do not intend to do so. Any discussion on the subject should therefore begin by works, interventions, or projects—did more than just materialize. They responded to
taking into account this chiasmus between the forms of politics and the politics of indicative strategies that, as an anthropological “deixis,” pointed towards the goal of
form. Within a framework that recognizes such theoretical and historical implications, achieving modernity, or at least embodying it by means of symbolic forms, either as a
one should also assess to what degree the languages created by Latin-American viable expectation or as a collective wish.
artists, based on the modern abstract and non-objective art practiced by European Therefore, it is necessary to determine the historic role these “symbolic agents”
and American artists during the second half of the twentieth century, were merely a played in the early manifestations of geometric abstraction in Argentina, Uruguay,
repertoire of “ornaments” or, on the contrary, a rich grammar of “alter-forms.” Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela in the twentieth century, for there is no doubt they made
It has been stated—and this has been yet another stereotype subject to public up the first constellation of American non-objective art.3 To what extent were these
controversy in Latin America—that geometric abstraction was a way of evading ur- artistic forms agents of change, and hence more than just mere elements of style
gent social and political issues in the countries where it flourished. This point of view, within a context of collective and social challenges, as occurred with social realism
which stems from the most basic aspects of ideological reductionism and is far from or indigenismo in other corners of the continent? Like indigenismo and social real-
the battlefield of the abstract artist, tends to entail an impoverishing, petty logic, a ism, geometric abstraction too was a “deixis” that pointed towards, if not identified,
simplistic and Manichean mind, capable of opposing “deaf” abstract art to “eloquent” a specific narrative of modernity; a narrative that would eventually flourish in certain
figurative art. But it is a well-known fact that visibility is impossible without figures and communities and countries in the form of a solid grammar of visual art forms.
that all visual arts require a skilful use of such figures, even—and especially—when In this day and age and with the somewhat nostalgic certainty the ruins of the
the artwork is not mimetic, that is, when the visual structure created by the artist modern project provide, one of the anthropological and social functions of non-objec-
does not rely on representation. tive abstraction becomes clear: this art movement made modernity accessible—or

FIG. 1. Central area of the

Covered Plaza, Universidad
Central de Venezuela. Photo:
Paolo Gasparini, 1985–90.
Archivos Fundación FIG. 2. Stained glass
Villanueva, Caracas window (1954) by Fernand
Léger at the Library of the
Universidad Central de
Venezuela. Photo: Paolo
Gasparini, 1985–89. Archivos
PAGES 52–53: Fundación Villanueva,
Detail of CAT. 174 (p. 241) Caracas

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at least grounded a “symbolic illusion” of modernity—in those countries where it Venezuelan constructivist art scene, that of “legitimization.” The magnitude of a civic
flourished as a dominant form of art.4 Such was the case of the constructivist tradition project such as the Ciudad Universitaria entailed “legitimized” the repertoire of geo-
that emerged in Venezuela, between the creation of the Taller Libre de Arte (Free Art metric abstract art. Furthermore, this “legitimization” was not only realized in func-
Studio) in the late 1940s and its transformation into a “kinetic academicism” in the tional or formal terms, it was fundamentally an ideological recognition, made possible
early 1970s. by the number of artists who contributed to Villanueva’s project. Together with avant-
Understanding non-objective abstraction’s anthropological role requires a change garde artists from Europe such as Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Victor Vasarely, Fernand
of perspective on our part. We must cease approaching the constellations of Latin- Léger, Anton Pevsner, and Henri Laurens, young Venezuelan creators, mainly from the
American geometric abstraction from a typological point of view, as a formal typology Taller Libre, also partook in the project. These artists included Otero and Víctor Valera,
or an artistic model, in order to view them from a “topological” angle. The different Pascual Navarro, González Bogen, Alirio Oramas, and Mateo Manaure. Soto and Cruz-
aspects of geometric abstraction then become a system of topoi or “topologies,” that Diez’s absence from Villanueva’s venture is as symptomatic of the complexity of our
is, constitutive elements of space (as well as historic spatiality), apparatuses of place story as it is of the obliteration of these details by those who define geometric ab-
(or concepts of place), and key operators in the historical construction of “modernity’s straction in exclusively kinetic terms. The invention and execution of Alejandro Otero’s
place” and therefore of “modernity as a place.” typology Coloritmos (Colorhythms) [cat. 182–184] in the late 1950s brings the period
of “legitimization” to an end.

II.
With the purpose of contributing to the amendment of this view, I will The third period in the constructivist art scene in Venezuela, during which it
begin by suggesting an ideological chronology of geometric abstraction in achieved critical “acclaim,” began in the 1960s, a time when geometric abstraction
Venezuela consisting of four distinct, fundamental chapters—emergence, was condensed to, if not absorbed by, kinetic art. During these years there was a
legitimization, acclaim, and deconstruction—each of which is marked by shift in political power in Venezuela and a new democratic regime was established,
an agglutinating event. but not without difficulty as it faced opposition on two fronts: from right-wing military
The first chapter or “emergence” of geometric abstraction coincided with the groups on the one hand, and a Castro-influenced armed guerilla on the other. This
founding in Caracas of the Taller Libre de Arte in 1948 and the staging that same year of period was marked by armed conflict but also by hope and stability, particularly for a
the first exhibition of abstract and non-objective art in Venezuela. Most of the works on bourgeois democracy that aimed to strengthen a growing middle class. Throughout
view belonged to the Argentine groups Madí and Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención this decade Jesús Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Carlos Cruz-Diez—three important fig-
(AACI).5 During their time at the Taller Libre de Arte, artists Carlos González Bogen ures in the constellation of Venezuelan constructivism—established or experimented
and Omar Carreño produced the first geometric-abstract works of art on Venezuelan with (as was the case of Otero) optical and kinetic effects. Towards 1968, once the
ground [cat. 171]. This period of “emergence” also saw the rise in Paris of the group armed conflict was over and these artists, who had been living between Paris and
Los Disidentes (The Dissidents) in 1950, and the execution that same year of the first Venezuela, returned to their homeland, the left-wing guerrilla was pacified and partially
non-objective, genuinely abstract works by Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto, assimilated by the democratic government. With the end of warfare, state authorities
who lived in France at the time. This period came to an end when several of the above- began promoting large-scale civic projects, which were commissioned to artists such
mentioned abstract artists were invited to take part in Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s protean as Soto, Otero, Cruz-Diez, Manaure, Lya Bermúdez, Gert Leufert, and Gego (Gertrude
project for the university campus of Caracas. In this cité radieuse, architect Villanueva Goldschmidt). Geometric abstraction finally left the hortus conoclusus of the univer-
aimed at achieving the modern ideal of a complete synthesis of the arts [fig. 1, 2, 3, 4]. sity campus and grew to be a dominant, monumental presence in the urban fabric of
This project, executed throughout the 1950s, as well as the presence of Alejandro Venezuelan cities well into the 1980s. These public projects can be understood as a
Otero in Caracas, marked the beginning of the second ideological period in the sort of abstract “muralism,” devoid of narrative yet able to convey, by means of the

FIG. 3. View of Henri FIG. 4. View of the Aula

Laurens’s Amphion (1953), Magna Hall, Universidad
Covered Plaza, Universidad Central de Venezuela, with
Central de Venezuela. Photo: Alexander Calder’s Acoustic
Paolo Gasparini, 1985–89. Clouds (1952–53). Photo:
Archivos Fundación Paolo Gasparini, 1985–89.
Villanueva, Caracas Archivos Fundación
Villanueva, Caracas

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Fundación Juan March

 prodigal force of optical variation featured in their civic friezes, the spectral figure or
the “kinetic illusion” of Venezuelan modernity.
The final period in Venezuelan constructivism began towards 1973 and ended
with the agonizing and unsuccessful outcome of a state project. The fact that sym-
bolic components of constructive abstraction and kinetic art had been appropriated
by younger generations of artists, who transformed them into formal instruments
of sarcasm, irony, and even allegory, is a symptom of this decline. The repertoire
of constructivism thus ceased to be a promise of modernity, nor was it a formal or
optical marvel, but rather the pretext for representing a “mackled” concept or sub-
stance, thus leading to geometric abstraction’s “deconstruction.” Roberto Obregón
and Eugenio Espinoza, Alvaro Sotillo, Sigfredo Chacón and Rolando Peña, Antonieta
Sosa, Héctor Fuenmayor, and Víctor Lucena were among the first generation of art-
ists to dismantle the Venezuelan constructivist art scene. They identified with Gego’s
quiet presence in the Venezuelan milieu, and it was precisely her fascinating inven-
tion entitled recticulárea (reticular area) that transformed abstraction—a type of ab-
straction that until then had been indifferent to its specific location in space—into a
FIG. 5. Gego (Gertrud “discreet” locus, a “specific site,” furthermore dismantling the rational, logocentric,
Goldschmidt), Recticulárea and illusionist assumptions of kinetic art [fig. 5].6 Many, if not all, Venezuelan con-
(installation), 1969. Stainless temporary artists have either emulated or followed in the footsteps of this generation
steel wire and aluminum and their deconstructive legacy.
tubes. Variable dimensions.

III.
Collection Fundación An overview of the history of Venezuelan constructivist abstraction
de Museos Nacionales. has been outlined in the above “ideological chronology.” I would now
Permanent installation, like to explore some inevitable considerations regarding this subject.
Galería de Arte Nacional, Successions of events in time are not as important as their ability
Caracas, 1997 to construct contexts, which leads to the often contradictive complexity events are

FIG. 7. Manuel Cabré

(Venezuela, 1890–1984),
Vista del valle de Caracas
desde el Calvario (View
of Caracas Valley from El
FIG. 6. Armando Reverón Calvario), ca. 1927. Oil on
(Venezuela, 1889–1954),
canvas, 64 x 143 cm
Paisaje blanco (White
Landscape), 1940. Oil on (25 ¼ x 56 ¼ in.). Colección
canvas, 65.5 x 88 x 2 cm Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
(25 ¾ x 34 ⅝ x ¾ in.).
Colección Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros
Photo: Mark Morosse

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Fundación Juan March

known for. Emergence, legitimization, acclaim, and deconstruction are biased terms, constructivist art scene. It must be pointed out, however, that constructivism was not
and their meaning, regardless of the context described here, is indebted to ideologi- the only form adopted by the modern project in Venezuela, but just one of many sides
cal connotations. The fact that one of the richest abstract, non-objective American art to the “modern coin.” An additional side can be found in social realism and in the many
movements appeared in Venezuela in the late 1940s indicates there was a breeding forms of “indigenismo” which brought to light the richness of the nation’s cultural and
ground for emerging artists. racial diversity. Several of these works were executed by artists who, at one moment
Also, one must not forget only “surreptitious” manifestations of modernity were or another, also strived to create constructivist and non-objective compositions, re-
possible in Venezuela before 1940. The country lived under brutal political repression sulting in some fascinating contradictions.10
during the late nineteenth century, a situation that did not change until the death of In this sense, interpreting Villanueva’s legitimizing project for the Ciudad
the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in 1935. In the words of one of the most lucid victims Universitaria de Caracas as a purely constructivist scheme is a stereotyping mistake
of the regime, this was a time of “Andean brutality, a dreadful epic of silent agonies, [fig. 6] . This historical coordinate should be construed as a battlefield, a site where
of hunger and torture.”7 Social issues in Venezuela were tainted by the backward- different, and sometimes conflictive, views of modernity were played out. Though
ness of the country and its anachronistic elite, circumstances only comparable to the the 1948 master building plan of the campus remained poised between a classical
hardships the Caribbean country endures at present, in spite of having been the first and “Beaux-Arts” style, the 1952 building program, influenced by Le Corbusier, was
country to set in motion the history of Latin-American emancipation in 1810, with its completely modern. The university campus, which is among the most brilliant of the
independence from Spain. modern “radiant cities” and also one of the few to be entirely concluded, remains an
But behind the humiliating and despicable acts carried out by this obscure regime open-ended question, an unsolved problem in the history of Venezuela’s modernity.
(which intellectuals willingly supported, with only a handful of exceptions), an extraor- The visual arts played a paramount role in the development of the project. While the
dinary event took place. Indifferent to Venezuela’s tragic history, one painter, a hermit exteriors display numerous non-objective and constructivist elements, figurative and
living on the fringes of the city and its moral and civic norms, built a primitive hut for allegorical works were placed at strategic points in the interior of the complex. As a
both himself and his partner, a modern house in the Adamic sense of the word.8 There, result, there is a contrast between the explicit manifestation of fundamental plastic
Armando Reverón was capable of executing a painting so delicately touched by light it elements in the constructivist works and the conspicuous, allegorical elements of
was freed from the laws of this world (and therefore from the norms of representation). the figurative pieces, emblematic of the history of Venezuela. Although the relevance
Reverón opened a door to new possibilities in modern art thanks to his melan- of this project was, in theory, confirmed by the presence of several renowned in-
cholic and dramatic monochrome landscapes and the contours of his idyllic figures, ternational artists alongside young Venezuelans who, for the first time, displayed a
which revealed the precarious material condition of painting [fig. 6] . In 1948, modern coherent constructivist repertoire of signs in a public space, it is only fair to say that
Venezuela discovered the richness of its own folklore and traditions while experiment- most of these “legitimizing” works were not executed in a non-objective, abstract
ing with democracy for the first time in its history. That same year, a young generation style.11 Furthermore, with the exception of the young Otero, who played a crucial
of artists identified with Reverón, an odd character whose work became an obsession part in Villanueva’s project, the leading artists in the university campus project were
to them, a challenge to overcome even at the peak of their artistic maturity.9 not those who would come to dominate the third period of constructivist abstraction,
Together with Reverón, whose artistic superiority went undisputed, a number of namely Soto or Cruz-Diez, but mainly Víctor Valera—one of the first artists to arrange
artists were also working at the time, among them Antonio Edmundo Monsanto, his murals in proto-minimalist patterns— as well as Navarro, Oramas, Manaure, and
Luis Alfredo López Méndez, Rafael Monasterios, César Prieto, Manuel Cabré, and González Bogen. Soto’s absence from the university campus project—albeit belatedly
Pedro Ángel González. Their modest yet moving landscapes of Caracas were crucial explained as a gesture of unwillingness to collaborate in the project due to its associa-
in instructing the first group of constructivist artists in the art of landscape. The young tion with the dictatorship—is significant in more ways than one. Soto had been active
artists were taught not to represent reality but to organize nature in synthetic and in Europe but, unlike Valera and Otero, had not yet worked on large-scale civic projects
analytical forms, which could then become the backbone of a composition and the in Venezuela.12 Cruz-Diez, on the other hand, was a graphic designer whose paintings
starting point of a sequence of patterns. The possibility of creating a new form of were inspired by social realism. However, he did not achieve success until the mid-
modern art is particularly appreciated in these master’s landscapes serially depicting 1960s, when he adopted an abstract-constructivist repertoire.13
El Ávila Mountain [fig. 7] . Similarly, Reveron’s radical, synthetic compositions and his As in the rest of the world, the 1960s in Venezuela were agitated years. Constructivist
indifference towards the world of art gave rise, quite unexpectedly and even unwill- art enjoyed great success and acclaim in the country, though under the form of kinetic
ingly, to the first significant outcome of Venezuelan modern art. art. It was during this time that it transformed into an “academicism” and infused more
With these precedents, which are strictly of an ideological and structural nature, traditional and even anonymous, folk-like forms of art across the nation. However, nei-
different versions of modernity began taking shape in 1940. The Taller Libre de Arte ther democratic stability nor constructivist art’s final success came easily. Challenging
and Los Disidentes contributed to this process and marked the outset of a genuine it there was, on the one hand, Art Informel, a tendency with which Soto, Otero, and

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Cruz-Diez briefly “toyed” during their stays in Paris, while in Venezuela the movement Jesús Soto was not only the leading artist during this period of expectations, he
was enthusiastically represented by the group Techo de Ballena. On the other hand, a also stood for the international acclaim achieved by Venezuelan constructivism. His
group of neo-figurative artists expressed their disapproval, often in a controversial way, works gained popularity both inside and outside the country in the 1960s.15 Soto stat-
towards the dominance of constructivist art. ed he wished to compensate for the lack of (organized political) structures in Venezuela
However marginal these alternative movements could have seemed vis-à-vis the with the structural outcome of his work, thus conveying through his oeuvre “an idea
triumph of constructivism, certain key ideas took shape on their ideological boundar- of what this country should someday be.”16 Beyond Soto’s somewhat vague assess-
ies which, in reality, would inform the budding Venezuelan contemporary art scene. ment of the country’s situation, this statement clearly reveals abstract constructivism
They shaped the emergence of kinetic art’s “deconstructive” generation of artists served as a symbolic—and maybe allegorical—surrogate for expectations regarding
through concepts such as time conceived as a subjective entity, a notion unfamiliar modernity. For over half a century, these collective expectations sustained certain
to kinetic art; a newfound interest in the body as a social type that defined the early aspects of the country’s developmentist official drive. Yet from a current standpoint,
work of artists Claudio Perna, Milton Becerra, and Pedro Terán; and a move to the fore- it becomes obvious these assumptions were merely “historical illusions.” This does
front of accidental, precarious, or “dirty” elements—new features utterly unrelated to not imply modernity was unattainable; Venezuela did not idealize its historical circum-
kinetic art’s impeccable and transparent aesthetic principles. stances more than the next Western country. And yet, despite the fact that the closer
Toward the end of the decade, artists as diverse as Alejandro Otero and Jacobo Venezuelan society came to this illusion of modernity the more quickly it seemed to
Borges produced an intervention in Caracas’s public space entitled Imagen de Caracas fade, the inner strength of this ideal served as a driving force that strengthened public
(Image of Caracas, 1968). This ephemeral event coincided with the democratic re- faith and hope in the country’s future. These expectations were expressed symbolical-
gime’s brief success and was held on occasion of the 400th anniversary of the found- ly by constructivist artists in their repertoire of forms and structures, a modern legacy
ing of the city. For the first time in the history of Venezuelan art, large-scale images in awaiting interpretation. However, in the late 1970s, emerging Venezuelan artists re-
movement were displayed alongside kinetic structures of equally monumental size. volted against constructivism’s illusions and kinetic art’s in particular. With this came a
Having worked with her partner Gert Leufert on various large-scale, urban interven- new period that only anticipated the age of disillusion to come, and whose distinctive
tions, Gego produced her first version of Recticulárea (1969, see fig. 5). The con- features and principles are to this day the backbone of contemporary Venezuelan art.
clusive impact of this piece on the constructivist art movement in Venezuela and its

IV.
long lasting influence through time thanks to the multiple installations and additions There was a certain component in this “illusion” that would unknow-
made by the artist between 1969 and 1981 cannot be understated. Recticulárea was ingly connect the collective and unresolved ideal of modernity to the
definitely installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas in a gallery of modest immediate and visually enticing effects of kinetic art, and the work of
proportions. And yet within this room, the idea behind most constructive works— Soto and Cruz-Diez in particular. Their pieces were, for the most part,
visual structures according to a specific regulatory plan—vanished amid the “rhizo- conceived as operators of optical illusions and, despite the artists’ call to systematic
mic” conditions of Gego’s masterwork, leaning towards a randomly generated form dematerialization, the outcome of their work was in line with the classical and human-
in which points transformed into knots, as if they were stains floating in the air. Inside istic principles of illusion. Light is refracted before the spectator’s eyes in the form
this juxtaposed reticulate structure, notions of centrality and symmetry disappeared, of bodiless steam into a mass of color in the works created by Soto. For Cruz-Diez,
while the netlike formation grew like an organic graft and became visible as a shadow on the other hand, color materialized outside the limits of its support, somewhere
against an impeccable white surface.14 between the viewer and the “painting.”
Gego’s reticulate structure implicitly manifests a series of beliefs that in turn serve Certain questions arise from these hypotheses: if these kinetic works of art can no
as its structural foundations: unpredictable germination localized and contained oc- longer be materially regarded as paintings, to what extent do they rely on the human-
cupation of space, supremacy of shadows, use of opaque structures, absence of istic presupposition that “painting” is the ideal support for representative art? What
all notions of centrality, the uncertainty of structural origin, and precarious stability. exactly takes place where “dematerialization occurs” and what is the political mean-
These principles contradict the poetics of constructivism, notably as they were con- ing or purpose of this event? What role does transparency play—a feature Soto began
densed into the fascinating optical effects of kinetic art. It can also be argued that researching at the start of his career—vis-à-vis the opaque Venezuelan anthropological
Recticulárea, with its fractal, accidental pattern and its organic and unplanned struc- and political background?
ture, stands as a symbolic form of resistance against the “planning expectations” of Finding answers to these questions today is an almost impossible task, more
developmentism that dominated Venezuela’s ideological (and also political and sym- even in a study as brief as this. However, some can be sketched out: Venezuela’s
bolic) program throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and which were efficiently and con- program for development was triggered by the collective goal of reaching modernity
vincingly translated into aesthetic terms by kinetic art. and chiefly by the establishment of a democratic government in 1958. It appears the
program revolved around two notions, two concepts that have been key in modeling

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national political and symbolic constructs: donation and promise. That said, what can (Rotation) not only represents a world of possibilities or an aleph, but also condenses
be defined as donation and promise in the illusory yet magnificent artistic repertoire and anticipates the late work of this superb Venezuelan artist. Behind its seemingly
of optical effects that condensed and eventually put an end to Venezuela’s abstract- straightforward composition lay complex problems and persistent, or surviving, con-
constructivist adventure during the twentieth century? cerns related to the humanistic tradition of visual representation. The result is one
In 1935, Venezuela woke up to the nightmare of its past. Venezuelan society either of the most brilliant and fruitful “alter-forms” in Venezuelan abstract constructivism.
could not or ignored how to conceive its nineteenth-century history in any way other As the artist himself pointed out,19 Rotación [cat. 174], 1952, describes the virtual
than as a sequential account of involuntary and stigmatizing tragedies, tainting the rotation of a square moving from left to right on the picture plane. The potential fea-
country with “dirty” images. With the purpose of contesting such a blemished histori- tures of this phenomenon, or Soto’s manner of expressing it in visual terms, is linked
cal past, Venezuela’s collective modern imaginary fabricated the idea of an innocent to one of his intellectual preoccupations. Before dematerialization became a recurrent
nation and a primitive, Adamic citizen—a country cursed by a history of which its citi- theme and the mythical origin of conceptual art, Soto had shown interest in demate-
zens were only victims now appeared to be blessed by nature and the fresh kindness rializing the art object by means of optical effects. It therefore comes as a surprise to
of its innocent inhabitants.17 see Soto tentatively “materializing” the object in an effort to “materialize dematerial-
In general terms, the national modern project consisted in transforming the dona- ization,” putting at risk his initial goal of producing an immaterial work.
tion of natural blessings and the mestizo racial type into a source of social energy that In Rotación, the width of the picture plane’s material support varies in relation to the
could be productive to the country’s development. A “gift” is not returned, a “dona- vertical wall on which it hangs, the upper edge being wider than the bottom one [fig. 8].
tion” does not expect to be paid back, and what was “given,” understood as a mate- The square’s imaginary rotation takes place on this tilted surface. Soto creates a
rial source of energy, could only survive as a promise or as vision of emancipation. sense of virtual motion by permuting one of the edges and tracing a black line that
Nevertheless, the variety of art forms this rhetoric generated throughout the twenti- makes its way around a number of white squares arranged from left to right, like
eth century in Venezuela should not be underestimated, even now, as a supposedly words in a text or the hands of a clock moving clockwise. But at a specific point, the
revolutionary (yet once again anachronistic) regime dictatorially transforms them into white squares fade from the background and all that remains is a rotating black trace
caricature and sarcasm. outlining them while it continues moving from left to right. In a third episode, the ro-
Among the most compelling and symbolically productive of these art forms is a tating line is reduced to the representation of its limits, two dots moving in the same
body of work created by those artists who reduced the language of the visual arts to direction as the line. The square’s rotating motion concludes with three simple parallel
basic elements, to the lowest level possible of “phenomenological donation.” These lines formed by aligned dots. This final episode occurs in the lower area of the plane,
objects of art were slashed to their geometric, constitutive underpinnings: line, point, specifically where the inclined surface becomes thinner as it approaches the wall.
plane, or volume, with the purpose of representing—there is no other term for it— There is an additional, apparently invisible, aspect in Rotación that has important
their transformation into fabulous optical machines. Such are the principles of kinetic implications: the square’s illusory rotation exposes two different states of motion that
art. The fact that these machines were displayed at locations crucial to the modern, are not illustrated. This occurs beyond the right side of the work and therefore is not
and modernizing, project—urban sites, iron mines, oil fields, or hydroelectric plants— represented on the work’s surface.
allows us to interpret them as the materalization of a vast allegory of modernity. They The event that occurs in Rotación has much in common with mimetic art, wherein
can therefore be conceived as forms of muralism, albeit devoid of narrative, bearing the representation of an object transcends the boundaries of the painting’s material
the promise of Venezuelan modernization.18 support. For the spectator can only see a fragment of the scene and is required to
An “ideal vision” materializes before the viewer or, more specifically, between the imagine the event depicted in the painting taking place outside the painting itself, in
viewer and the work, when confronted with these pieces. An illusory figure appears the same space shared by the viewer himself (what I refer to as “spectatorial environ-
and, as most illusions do, vanishes once the spectator comes to a halt. The mislead- ment”), a virtual margin that exceeds the representation’s physical support [fig.9] .
ing nature of kinetic optical devices is revealed to the viewer as he approaches them. In Rotación, the outcome of representation (as it was understood within the hu-
Much can be said on this distinctive feature of kinetic art and its persisting ideo- manistic tradition, that is, as a fragment of the vastness of a universe that can be
logical stance that holds painting as a privileged support for ideal scenes, a theory represented) continues materializing outside the limits of the work. Hence, in this
that continues regulating its effects even though the material conventions of painting work by Soto there is an existential approach towards space or, more specifically,
have been superseded by its devices’ structural specificity. Hence an urgent question towards the notion of visible space in art and its organic association to “phenomeno-
must be addressed: if a form of politics hides behind a politics of form, what are the logical” space, where we, as spectators, live, and where events occur regardless of
ideological implications of concepts such as transparency and dematerialization when our actions and, ontologically speaking, have little to do with us—time, movement,
confronted with hypotheses regarding modernity as a mirage? the passage of time, life and death, or the never-ending, unconscious, and mandatory
As early as 1952, Jesús Soto composed one of his magnum opus in Paris. Rotación rotation of existence itself.

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FIG. 8

In a brilliant reading of Rotación, Ariel Jiménez has underlined its metaphysical im-
plications, suggesting the possibility of a sublime dimension.20 However, the absence
of two distinct states of motion from the work itself only points to no more—and
no less—than the “difference” between the device that is used for the representa-
tion and the real world. In other words, this caesura in the representation’s rotating
motion, this imperceptible “syncope,” does not imply the illusory motion has been
interrupted. On the contrary, it suggests the representation on the surface continues
to take place beyond its limits, in the space that resides outside the artistic object.
Therefore, rather than signaling a representation of what is unrepresentable, the work
is a metonymy for the universe (or at least the portion of reality it expands to)—a frag-
ment in which all things that transcend the limits of the work are condensed. More
than a “sublime” presence, it indicates something hors-champs, a reality that takes
place outside the viewer’s range of vision, extending beyond the conventional limits
FIG. 9 of the support.21
Rotación was a seminal work, not only for Soto’s career but for constructivist
abstraction and Venezuelan kinetic art in general. More importantly, the aspects men-
tioned above highlighted the persistent presence of a system rooted in traditional hu-
manistic modes of representation that dominated and even generated images in spite
of the non-objective techniques applied. This explains the superimposed structures in
the work, the first being the weft of rotating squares. As described above, they move
clockwise, from left to right, becoming more schematic as they progress and finally
concluding in a string of dots in the lower corner situated over a monochrome back-
ground. The second structure refers to the variety of paint layers, where four grids are
superimposed creating four “figural” patterns.
This matter has not been treated in depth and, in my view, is of paramount impor-
tance: the grid of white squares is arranged on the left and upper side of the work in
FIG. 10
uneven strips in terms of both width and length (the sequence of white squares on
the left side is thinner and does not reach the lower edge of the surface). A potential
square is detected in the inner vertex of this structure, where the strips bisect forming
a right angle (this square is a figure consisting of sixteen white squares, capable of
expressing all phases of the rotating motion on each of its sides).
Three strips of various widths are added to the grid stretching over the entire sur-
face from top to bottom. The first, consisting of rotating lines, is wider than the other
two; the second is formed by double rotating dots, whereas a succession of dots
indicates the presence of the third and thinnest strip [fig. 10] .

FIG. 11

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 Rotación’s structure requires a close reading. There is a logic behind these “fig- tiality, this figure requires a “point of view” given by the picture plane and through
ural” grids, as the main “theme” of the work is precisely the virtual rotating motion which a “local” coordinate occupied by a hypothetical spectator is inferred. This figure
of the square. The figurative signs applied by Soto to suggest or describe this rotating [fig.12] is situated in the upper left quadrant, at the right angle’s inner vertex, where
motion (namely lines, double dots, and successions of dots) are inscribed in both the succinctly configured distance represented by the sequence of dots opens to the
the grid of white squares and the monochrome, homogenous, neutral background. spectator. The fact that the figure is not in the center of the picture plane indicates that
These signs therefore play a part in the representation of the square as well as in Soto has deliberately produced in this work a potential oblique rather than a centered
the area deprived of its presence [fig. 11] . Soto has underlined the importance of perspectival projection.
these two contrasting “backgrounds” or “luminous resources” (“a white square on If this is the case, then Soto must have dismissed the idea of representing space
a virtually white background”). The fact that the last line of dots is situated on a blank in terms of perspective and opted for literally “materializing” space by reducing the
area located on the thinner, lower edge of the support is quite significant. Rather than support’s width, thus projecting the point of view onto a place coinciding, in a justified
signaling the “dematerialization” of the lower portion of the work of art, I believe the and conventional downward movement, with a diagonal coordinate situated to the
line signifies a “literalization” of distance, a materialization of the breadth involved in right, in front of the picture plane.
the artist’s description of rotating motion through a succession of dots. Bearing this in mind, it becomes obvious there is a relationship of mutual depen-
Or in the words of Jiménez, “it appears as though the subject of representation dence between the sixteen white squares situated in the upper left quadrant and the
has found resonance in the body of painting.” In this case, “representation” must last dot in the non-depicted lines on the lower right angle of the picture. It appears as
be understood as the “materialization” of “distance” figured as the work’s thickness though Rotación could “pronounce words” in a “figural” sense. The last dot, the last
reduces its material density and, under no circumstances, as a metaphor for the de- period in the sequence, puts an end to the “description” of the scene triggered by
materialization of the object. Only in this manner can I understand Soto’s remarks on the rotating motion. The viewer can then imagine the rotating square is at the farthest
the string of points on the lower edge of the work: “[the points] represent the sum point from the scene, it is the farthermost “object,” the last infinitesimal sign visible.
of all previous movements … and they are the orthogonal projection of the lines that Its overwhelming distance from the viewer’s body is only emphasized, or “literally”
previously rotated around the white squares. Therefore each point either represents indicated, by the fact that it is located outside the support, in a “real” space adjacent
or intends to represent the end of a line projecting onto the space perpendicular to to the work itself [fig. 13] .
the picture plane …”22 The last rotating square represented in the work is not, strictly speaking, situ-
This process leads to two results. On the one hand, the viewer can imagine a ated on Rotación’s surface. Yet the viewer may imagine it occupies a real location
square rotating in space ad infinitum while an abysmal distance is opened. Secondly, adjacent to the edges of the support. This is the result of the scheme described by
the orthogonal projection of dots on the lower side of the surface can be reconstruct- Soto whereby this particular rotating square is positioned farther from the viewer’s
ed as lines perpendicular to the picture plane. But this double reading of Rotación as body, in the second phase of unrepresented motion. Following Soto’s own account of
a temporary narrative or design to which an architecture of “figural” grids has been Rotación, one might be inclined to imagine the square projecting onto space. In this
incorporated brings forth the presence of a virtual “figure” on the work’s surface. The case, it must be concluded that a point can only exist in space as volume, and there-
“figure” we are referring to is the potential volume of a (rotating) square located on fore, regardless of the square’s invisible or imperceptible qualities or its distance from
the picture plane, specifically on the lower right corner of a quadrant that covers the the spectator, it can only be conceived as a virtual cube in space.
upper left angle of the work. The conclusions drawn from this study are essential to understanding Soto’s entire
The specific location of this square is not haphazard; it indicates the direction of body of work: Rotación inverts and “literalizes” mechanisms of perspective, which at
the dots’ orthogonal projection. the same time are canceled out by the art work itself. In a conventional representation
In other words, this “figure” is situated within a structure that makes possible its of space, wherein linear perspective and a vanishing point are used, the farthermost
projection onto space according to the mechanisms of perspective. Despite its poten- objects are situated in the upper area of the picture plane rather than on the lower

FIG. 12 Schemes of Jesús Rafael

Soto’s Rotación (Rotation),
1952, manipulated by Luis
Pérez-Oramas

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FIG. 13

side, as is the case in Rotación; hence the “inversion” [fig. 14]. In regards to “literal-
ization,” when Soto places the square formed by aligned dots and represented from
an infinite, orthogonal viewpoint, the support becomes thinner and therefore appears
to be moving away from the viewer’s body and sinking into the wall. However, the
work inspires the viewer to picture himself as a speck in space (situated on the outer
right side of the picture plane), while superbly transforming points into virtual volumes
and occupying the space that precedes the picture plane: the spectator’s body. As
with all reliable mechanisms of perspective, the body becomes a point and the points
become virtual bodies.
Rotación thus focuses on the viewer’s virtual presence. And like an extraordinary
theoretical machine, its orthogonal projection inspires the viewer to imagine the spa-
tial structure of the scene. Yet due to the work’s geometric and non-objective nature,
FIG. 14 it is reluctant to represent the point of view that enables the spectator to reconstruct
in a coordinate location the potential representation. This focal point is in fact located
in the vertex of the projection, on the outer right side of the picture plane.
The vanishing point is absorbed by the material qualities of the support, specifi-
cally where the picture becomes so thin it is mistaken for the wall. Furthermore, the
focal view is projected diagonally in front of the work, as in most oblique perspectives.
Here, one can envisage an overarching vision expanding outwards as the viewer is
transported to the farthermost point imaginable. Rotación therefore generates a place
for the spectator, a space conceived as incommensurable distance, a farness so great
vision cannot see or perceive but only carry out analytical experiments.
Rotación does not attempt to create a projection of an infinite or uncharted place,
similar to God, as suggested in Jiménez’s enthusiastic metaphysical reading. Instead,
it puts forward a theory based on a specific coordinate of vision situated perpendicu-
larly on one side of the picture. From here the spectator can move around the work,
shifting from left to right and vice versa. The work of art anticipates a dynamic form of
perception linked to “muralism” and its reliance on oblique perspective, a particular
type of vision set into motion by kinetic art’s large-scale friezes and also more modest
works.
A vanishing point does not refer to a point in infinity, nor is it a coordinate equiva-
lent to the unrepresentable figure of God. Several visual experiments related to van-
ishing points did indeed anticipate an idea of infinity until a proper concept was for-
mulated by Desargues in the seventeenth century. But strictly speaking, a vanishing
point can only signify distance, or the farthest point perceivable, hence where the
representation ends. Though infinitely far, a focal point signifies a specific place where
figures are depicted even as small specks. Due to geometric principles, the viewer’s
body is also reduced to a small point, an expressible logarithm, from where the scene
is perceived at the risk of jeopardizing our fluctuating and relative density in favor of
clarity of vision.
Rotación does not evoke God’s infinite presence but rather the result of our rup-
ture from infinity, our immersion and vanishing in spatial finitude. As vision loses its
perceptive qualities and becomes a purely analytical task, our body becomes an illu-
sion fading into an incommensurable distance as it transforms into a point, a unit of

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geometry. The dematerialization of vision is directly related to the creation of a prod- Museums, 2001); Ariel Jiménez (Paralelos, 2002); Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea
igal mechanic device capable of generating programmed, precise, and predictable (Inverted Utopias, 2004); Juan Carlos Ledezma (The Sites of Latin American Abstraction,
images. Years later, in 1968, spectators’ bodies would fade into Soto’s Penetrables, 2006); Osbel Suárez (Lo[s] Cinético[s], 2007); and Mary Kate O’Hare (Constructive Spirit,
appearing and disappearing as mirages able to perceive, however, the rugged quality, 2010). These endeavors have tended to focus on the tensions that arise from geopolitical is-
the asperitas, of their skin immersed in the plastic weft of strings that constitute the sues (the politics of isolation vs. domination). As a result, the true nature of the problem has
structure of these dense, efficient environmental artistic devices. The “political” key often been overlooked, namely the conditions required for the emergence of modernity in
to understanding both the prodigy and misery of the Venezuelan constructivist art the extended field of its “survival,” regardless of the first manifestations of avant-garde art.
scene can be found in the fascinating contradictions present in Soto’s work and other 2 Due to the limited extension of the present essay, a consistent argument on this subject
representative forms of kinetic art. Politics of form strived for an ideal of demateri- cannot be treated in-depth. I have not proposed a historicist or formalist viewpoint, but rather
alization but, as in an act of denial, only managed to suggest it through material, or an anthropological approach to the history of art in line with Aby Warburg’s understanding
materializing, mechanisms. of the Renaissance or persistence of forms (Nachleben) through concepts such as “ritual”
As Ariel Jiménez pointed out, Rotación made it possible to see Soto’s entire body (the function of ritual as a regulating instrument in the production of symbolic objects), or
of work addressing the spectator’s space with a clarity of vision previously unknown, Pathosformel (the topology of figures, or the position of figures as the result of a collision
thus anticipating “the possibility, the will, the hope that painting will have an impact of feelings and forms), and mainly through the notion of “transitional form” (formal solu-
on us, its viewers.”23 But what impact does this picture have on us? What does it tions and underlying ritualistic practices or symbolic automatisms, which serve as a bridge
produce on us when we see it? Rotación forces us to embody distance, as our body between the spheres of art and life). I have outlined the possibilities of applying Warburg’s
becomes a small point from where to perceive other bodies projecting into infinity. theories to the field of American modernity in the following works: “Gego, retículas residu-
The picture produces a mirage and re-produces us as a mirage. Constructivist abstrac- ales y modernidad involuntaria: la sombra, los rastros y el sitio,” in Mari Carmen Ramírez and
tion in Venezuela, and kinetic art in particular, were strategically confined to a complex Theresa Papanikolas, eds., Questioning the Line: Gego in Context (Houston: The Museum of
process that relegated them to historical mirages. The fact that these forms of art Fine Arts, 2003), 94ff.; “Some Notes on Image and Text in the Latin American Collection of
came about “in place of” modernity has, to this day, important implications in the the Blanton Museum,” in Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, ed., Blanton Museum of Art: Latin American
understanding of the country. The ideological dimension of concepts such as “trans- Collection (Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 2006), 71ff.; “An Atlas of Drawings,” in
parency” or “dematerialization” as opposed to the narrative of modernity as illusion, An Atlas of Drawings: Transforming Chronologies (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
argued here, must also be addressed. Or in other words, the forms of politics gener- 2006); and “Caracas: A Constructive Stage,” in Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, ed., The Geometry of
ated in Venezuela by these politics of form. These forms intended to produce their Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (Austin:
own optical mirages, and as in Rotación, they led to both a theory and a place for our The University of Texas at Austin, 2007), 83ff.
bodies to fade as an illusion. This is, perhaps, because underlying their fascinating abil- 3 See Luis Pérez-Oramas, “La colección Cisneros: Del paisaje al lugar,” in Mary Schneider, Ariel
ity to seduce is a bitter ideal of modernity. An ideal that required, as a prerequisite for Jiménez and Luis Pérez-Oramas, Geometric Abstraction, 39ff.
its materialization, “disposing of a body,” our body, and was therefore doomed to fail, 4 This was not a distinctive feature of Latin-American geometric abstraction, and can be ap-
to encounter genuine, material resistance and shatter against the asperitas of history. preciated in most avant-garde movements. In other words, trudging through modernity col-
lectively, due to the impossible conclusion of the modern project, was not a prerogative
ENDNOTES of Latin America. However, materializing the symbolic coordinates of modern utopia more
convincingly and coherently than in Europe—at a time when Europe was consumed by the
1 This debate dates back many years, at least to 1934, when Joaquín Torres-García returned to apocalyptic flames of its modern wars, which not only burned to ashes millions of bodies but
his hometown of Montevideo and paved the way for his constructive universalism, in which also the ideals and expectations of early modernity—was a prerogative of America.
two forceful and modern myths overlapped: the concept of universal art and the possibil- 5 The Taller Libre de Arte (Free Art Studio) was established as a cultural association. Its found-
ity it may derive from archetypes and primitive forms. Since then there have been several ing members, most of whom graduated from Caracas’s Escuela de Artes Plásticas in 1945,
attempts to formalize and also differentiate neo-constructivist art forms yielded by Latin- had worked under painter Antonio Edmundo Monsanto, who introduced them to the rudi-
American artists from those produced by Europeans or Americans. Examples include Gabriel ments of avant-garde art and cubism in particular. With painters, critics, and poets among its
Pérez-Barreiro’s Geometría de la esperanza (Geometry of Hope), written for the Colección members, the group did not share a coherent style and their work transcended the visual
Cisneros (2006), as well as the curatorial efforts of Roberto Pontual (Geometría Sensible, arts. Prominent members included Oswaldo Trejo, Mateo Manaure, Marius Sznajderman,
1978); Federico Morais (Vertiente Constructiva, First Mercosul Biennial, 1997); Mary Dora Hersen, Narciso Debourg, Carlos González Bogen, Alirio Oramas, Perán Erminy, Rubén
Schneider, Ariel Jiménez, and Luis Pérez-Oramas (Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Núñez, Alejandro Otero, Pascual Navarro, Ramón Vásquez Brito, Virgilio Trómpiz, and Luis
Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, Cambridge: Harvard University Art Guevara Moreno, among others. Following the establishment of the Studio, several artists

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 left for Paris and founded the group Los Disidentes (The Dissidents). Alejandro Otero’s cof- Navarro followed their own winding paths between lyrical or non-objective abstraction and
fee pots were the focus of the second abstract art exhibition in Venezuela, held at the Museo different styles of figurative art.
de Bellas Artes in 1949. Although Otero would join the non-objective art movement in 1951, 11 With the exception of Pevsner and Vasarely’s work, as well as Calder’s celebrated Acoustic
these oil paintings did not follow this style, as they synthesized the principles of perception. Clouds on view at the Aula Magna, the “legitimizing” interventions provided by the European
6 The ideological principles of Venezuelan geometric abstraction were “pristine” forms, “im- avant-garde were semi-figurative, allegoric, symbolist, or simply in line with lyrical abstrac-
peccable” structures, conceptual resistance to manifestations of “patina,” and a fixation tion, as was the case with Léger and Calder. Although the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas
with “transparency.” In 1973, contemporary artists from Venezuela began to dismount these was the first platform for the promotion of Venezuelan art, it was not the first constructivist
principles and represent them as “stains,” though not necessarily in the style of Tachisme. intervention of significance to take place during the 1950s. Several works from the late
They continued to create abstract or constructivist-abstract compositions albeit focusing on 1940s deserve mentioning: in the Acoustic Shell of Bello Monte, Otero translated his early
expressing the corrosive power of time and concept. Víctor Lucena and Roberto Obregón post-Mondrian experiments into a mural structure. The architectural complex Centro Simón
contributed to this process. In their work, corrosive or phenomenal traces of temporary Bolívar deserves special attention. Cipriano Domínguez designed the towers, where Carlos
existence dismount the conceptual and logocentric stability inherent to constructive abstrac- González Bogen executed a massive ceiling mural, the first large-scale mural in Venezuela
tion, resulting in extremely deconstructive effects. Nonetheless, the late work of Gego is to incorporate constructivist and non-objective elements, a distinction it held well into the
undoubtedly the most significant exception to the ideology of transparency and constructive 1970s.
impeccability. 12 Soto’s statement, according to which he declined to cooperate on Villanueva’s project due
7 José Rafael Pocaterra, Memorias de un venezolano de la decadencia (Madrid: Edime, 1956), to its association with the dictatorship, contradicts the fact that he accepted an important
1224. commission from the government during those years. The commission, a large-scale mural,
8 Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural was exhibited in the Venezuela Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Belatedly, as if
History (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981). hoping to pay a debt or atone for a previous mistake, a statue belonging to Soto’s series
9 This was the case of Alejandro Otero, who organized an exhibition of Reverón’s work at the Estructuras cinéticas (Kinetic Structures, 1956–57) was placed in the gardens of the School
Taller Libre. In spite of Otero’s attempt to move away from Reverón’s ideas, his synthetic of Architecture. Although this piece was not foreseen in Villanueva’s initial scheme, there
and monochrome paintings from 1951—possibly the most radical example of abstract art in can be no doubt of the architect’s interest in persuading a young Soto to join his project, as
America at the time—are only comparable to Reverón’s white landscapes executed between appreciated in a letter written by Soto in 1953 in response to Villanueva’s invitation—a docu-
1926 and 1940. ment recently discovered by Osbel Suárez in the Fundación Villanueva archives. Likewise,
10 Artists such as Otero and Cruz-Diez were fond of social and indigenous figurative art dur- there is a scale model of a mural intended for the university whose location, to my knowl-
ing their youth, whereas Vázquez Brito, González Bogen, Guevara Moreno, Manaure, and edge, has not been identified.

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13 With the exception of a brief non-objective episode in 1954–55, Cruz-Diez clearly expressed 16 Ariel Jiménez, “Conversaciones con Jesús Soto,” Cuadernos de la Fundación Cisneros 6
his political opposition to pure abstraction and sought a form of art that moved towards (Caracas, 2005), 107.
greater social engagement. His first abstract works, consisting of organic and manipulable 17 For a discussion on these ideas, see Luis Pérez-Oramas, “Inventar la modernidad en tierra de
structures, date from 1956. Following these works, he began conducting in-depth research Adán: Alfredo Boulton, Armando Reverón y Bárbaro Rivas,” in Ariel Jiménez, Alfredo Boulton
on constructivist art, the outcome of which was his first Physichromie in 1959. y sus contemporáneos. Diálogos críticos en el arte venezolano 1912–1974 [exibition cata-
14 For a broader analysis of Recticulárea as critique of the constructivist tradition in Venezuela, logue] (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 324ff.
see Luis Pérez-Oramas, “Gego, Laoconte, las redes y la indecisión de las cosas,” in Gego. 18 Kinetic art often requires a shift of position in the spectator that is analogous, in terms of
Obra Completa 1955–1990 (Caracas: Fundación Cisneros, 2003), 299ff; “Gego y la escena structural function, to the visual reading involved in narrative and figurative works of art. For
analítica del cientismo,” in Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, Heterotopías. Medio siglo an analysis of the political implications of this phenomenon, see “La hipoteca del ornato en
sin-lugar: 1918–1968 [exibition catalogue] (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina las artes visuales venezolanas,” in Luis Pérez-Oramas, La cocina de Jurassic Park y otros
Sofía, 2000), 245ff. ensayos visuales (Caracas: Fundación Polar, 1998), 253ff. For an interpretation of the meta-
15 Soto’s success as one of Venezuela’s leading official artists owes much to Raúl Leoni’s presi- physical implications of this phenomenon in the work of Jesús Soto, see Ariel Jiménez, “Un
dency (1964–69) and Rafael Caldera’s first term as president (1969–74), during which Soto ámbito de luz. Por un Soto barroco,” in Soto (Caracas: Fundación Soto, 2007), 33ff.
participated on large-scale projects such as the Venezuela Pavilion at the 1967 Universal 19 Ariel Jiménez, “Conversaciones con Jesús Soto,” 55–58.
exhibition in Montreal and the Museo Soto in Ciudad Bolívar, founded in 1973. Both complex- 20 Ariel Jiménez, “Un ámbito de luz,” 34.
es were designed by the modern architect Villanueva, in whose university campus project 21 This reading coincides with the artist’s own viewpoint: “at that moment I was attracted to
Soto had not taken part. In addition to Alejandro Otero, whose public sculpture was con- the idea that I did not have to represent everything that was suggested in the work, it could
cluded on occasion of the 400th anniversary of Caracas’s founding, mention must be made continue in any direction.” Ariel Jiménez, “Conversaciones con Jesús Soto,” 58.
of Mateo Manaure, whose urban interventions on buses, pedestrian walkways, and bus 22 Ariel Jiménez, “Un ámbito de luz,” 36, and “Conversaciones con Jesús Soto,” 57.
stops marked the end of the 1960s. Carlos Cruz-Diez yielded important works in the 1970s, 23 Ariel Jiménez, “Un ámbito de luz,” 36.
including spectacular interventions at the José Antonio Páez Hydroelectric Power Plant and
at the Maiquetía International Airport headquarters. He also redesigned Plaza Venezuela,
Caracas’s new city center. Although Cruz-Diez’s masterpiece, the machine rooms at Raúl
Leoni Hydroelectric Power Station in Guri (1983), was produced outside the chronological
limits of the present essay, it must be noted that this installation represents the climax of
abstract constructivism and is also a sign of Venezuela’s modernization.

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 Invention
and Reinvention:
The Transatlantic
Dialogue in
Geometric
Abstraction1
Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro

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A
ny discussion of art produced in Latin America, this question of context has been one of the fault lines along which different ap-
perhaps especially within the tradition of geo- proaches and ideologies have formed. For some, Latin America is a context in its to-
metric abstraction, seems condemned to en- tality, constructed separate from and in opposition to a so-called “West” (Europe and
gage with questions of context and locale, and North America). The most complete articulation of this model was the 2004 exhibition
by extension, the thornier issues of originality Inverted Utopias where all production connected to Latin America (even if not pro-
and derivation, or invention and copy. However duced within its borders) was inevitably the reversal of a central model.2 In this model
much we may wish to reclaim and recover an Latin America is necessarily a place of difference, a contemporary El Dorado where
under-recognized contribution to art history, art will do all the things it doesn’t do elsewhere: full of the eternal promise of the real
and to level the geographic and cultural playing and the oppositional. For others, context is national, coinciding with political borders
field against centuries of Eurocentrism, we are and nationality, so that, for example, Torres-García will always be an Uruguayan artist
obliged as historians to examine the supposi- wherever his work was produced, even if most of his adult life was spent outside that
tions and mechanisms through which images country. In this model nationality is about so much more that just physical location: it
generate interpretations. To ignore this is to is an unalienable DNA that the artist will carry around for all of his or her life, a cultural
fall into the trap of expanding the repertoire of force field that will protect artists from undue influence from or on the specific context
available images without questioning the rea- in which they happen to find themselves. And then there are those who define con-
son for their prior exclusion, or simplifying this into a narrow political project of vindi- text according to the particular place and time in which works are made, regardless of
cation and visibility, in which the “other” is valued qua periphery, thereby involuntarily where the principal actors happened to have been born. This was the model I pursued
reinforcing the validity of the “center” through binary opposition. In this essay, I would partially in the exhibition The Geometry of Hope, where cities constituted the units of
like to take a case study involving the relationship between European and Argentine context.3 But this model is also limited as the true cultural geography of artworks con-
artists of the 1930s and 1940s, specifically through a group of works by Alfredo Hlito, sists of a combination of physical contact and coincidence, and also virtual networks,
Georges Vantongerloo, and Richard Paul Lohse, to analyze how images and ideas influences that travel via publications, discussions, letters, magazines, and so many
travel through time and space, and how we try to attribute meaning according to the other mechanisms that create a web of influences and debates that supersede a city’s
interface between artistic intention, context, and history. limits. Then, of course, there is the model that entirely de-contextualizes the work in
The term invention means many different things: discovery, contrivance, fabrica- favor of a purely formal analysis, which has the advantage of often being closer to
tion, creation. Which of these terms we use tends to depend ultimately on a moral
position, a feeling of entitlement to use a particular idea or concept, and is therefore
related to a sense of intellectual or cultural property, or even propriety. If we consider
that an invention belongs absolutely to its inventor, then any subsequent elaboration
is a form of usurping, of unauthorized use. If, however, we believe that culture is
necessarily dynamic and dialogic, then the reinvention of forms and ideas becomes a
positive factor and the very engine of artistic development. These issues are particu-
larly acute in art and entertainment law, where they translate into related issues of
copyright protection and financial liability. But they are also important issues in art his-
tory, where a tracing of the genealogy of ideas and images is part of how we structure
history and generate meaning.
If we were to try to reduce conventional art history to an equation, it might look
something like this: intention + context = content. If we isolate each of these ele- FIG. 1. Argentina. Alfredo
ments we can see that they are constructed in very different ways. Intention, at least Hlito, Ritmos cromáticos
since modern art, can be deduced from artist statements, writings, contemporary III (Chromatic Rhythms III),
debates, and of course from evidence of the works themselves. The biggest chal- 1949. Oil on canvas, 100 x
lenge here is to determine the distance that inevitably exists between the stated 100 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ in.).
intention and the finished work. Context, in comparison, is almost entirely determined Colección Patricia Phelps de
by the historian alone. How, where, and why we decide to delimit context is, like the Cisneros
relative value of invention, a largely ideological decision. In the case of Latin America,

FIG. 2. Argentina. Alfredo

Hlito, Ritmos cromáticos
(Chromatic Rhythms), 1947.
Oil on canvas, 70 x 70 cm
(27 ½ x 27 ½ in.). Private
PAGES 66–67: collection
Detail of CAT. 57 (p. 130)

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the artist’s stated intention at the expense of a more complex historical study. What
is clear is that context can mean many different things, and that the configuration of
these things will inevitably have an effect on the reading of an artwork and therefore
on its place in art history.
Before this becomes too abstract, I’d like to propose the following conundrum:
four works produced by three different artists in three different contexts [fig. 1, 2, 3,
4] . Without attributions and dates, it is near impossible to guess which was painted
in Paris in 1937, which in Zurich in 1945, and which in Buenos Aires in 1947 and
1949. The works are so similar in style, format, and technique that they are virtually
indistinguishable, even to the trained eye. One of the first issues here is how we
view relative distance. In other words, if these were works made in quattrocento
Italy—one in Florence, one in Venice, and the other in Ferrara and a decade apart—we FIG. 3. Switzerland. Richard
would comfortably consider them to be examples of the same phenomena: the Italian Paul Lohse, Konkretion I
Renaissance, even if the temporal and relative physical distances are comparable.4 (Concretion I), 1945–46. Oil
However, by the time we get to modernity, and particularly where Latin America is on Pavatex, 70 x 70 cm (27
involved, we tend to be more fussy about absolute chronology and geography, and ½ x 27 ½ in.). Richard Paul
draw a line between some artworks and others, and that line usually falls neatly be- Lohse-Stiftung, Zurich
tween Europe and Latin America. That binary division does a number of things. First
of all it allows us to establish hierarchy: earlier and European correspond to ‘origin’ or
‘cause’, while later and Latin American correspond to ‘copy’ or ‘effect’. As soon as we
have done this, there will be those on either side who start to construct positions: on
one side those who snobbily reinforce their ideas of cultural supremacy, and on the
other those who reclaim a political position of difference, making the other embody
ideas of ethnic and cultural identity, or even see one as the inversion of the other.
Of course this simplistic division also creates another important blind spot: the rela-
tionships within contexts, by reducing Latin America and Europe to two monolithic
blocks, when there are important national, cultural, and historical differences within
those borders.
The question of context and Latin America/Europe is further complicated by the
implicit universalism of abstract art in general, and the inscription of this tradition
within a region (Latin America) that has often been considered too “backward” to
participate fully in anything other than folkloric or magical realist art. Up until the
1990s Latin American abstraction was generally dismissed from international dis-
cussion of Latin American art for being too cosmopolitan, too internationalist, and
therefore not ‘Latin American’ enough (whatever that may mean). In Latin America
itself the story was often different. For example, to take the case of Alfredo Hlito’s
homeland, Argentina, these abstract works of the 1940s were often interpreted as FIG. 4. Belgium, active Paris.
a triumphant moment in which Argentina “caught up” with the rest of the world. To Georges Vantongerloo,
quote Jorge Romero Brest, for instance: “The first attempt to overcome the hybrid Fonction-composition
nature of Argentine art was with the Argentine concrete artists of the 1940s, because (Function-Composition),
they frankly accepted the dogma of Max Bill, Georges Vantongerloo, and did things 1937. Oil on board, 56 x
as well as they did.”5 Of course this model is just as passive as the facile rejection of 78 cm (22 x 30 ¾ in.).
internationalism, in that the work is judged only in terms of its stylistic similarity to a Kunstmuseum Basel
model; in this case judged negatively from abroad and positively at home.

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 So what do we do with works like this that are so close to their model? Again, it
depends largely on what we want to do with them. One option is, as we have seen,
to dismiss them as derivative or praise them as evidence of being up to date, which
is essentially the same thing. Another is to take this similarity as the justification
for a true internationalism. In this case we would ignore the physical and temporal
location of the works and see them as different expressions of a shared artistic lan-
guage that crosses national and temporal borders. Implicit in the modern project is
the notion that there is an absolute perceptual and mathematical code that once all
the trappings of traditional art (perspective, illusion, etc.) have been removed would
show the bare naked and essential elements of art, and certainly our three artists,
Hlito, Vantongerloo, and Lohse, would have subscribed enthusiastically to that idea.
However, this aspiration, that according to its own logic would have created a single
unified artistic style, had quite the opposite effect. As John Elderfield pointed out in
a brilliant essay for the Dallas Museum of Art in 1972: “Proponents of a utilitarian
geometric style had found it easy to cull from these [formal] sources a vocabulary
of ‘meaningful’ elements whose significance could be rationally explained, but well
nigh impossible to create a theory which would order their arrangement … Ultimately
it is the composition of elements and not the elements themselves that has greater
impact.”6 Elderfield’s point is that personal taste is an inevitable factor even in an art
that aspires to overcome it, and that there is no absolute order in the universe that
will show us how to make artworks. Personal taste is not only an inevitable result but
FIG. 5. Argentina. Juan perhaps even a cause of the ideologies that led to abstraction in the first place, and it
Melé, Marco recortado n° 2 is here that we can go beyond the surface to look in greater depth at the works.
(Cut-out Frame no. 2), 1946. These three artists aspired to an art that was “concrete”, meaning that rather than
Oil on plywood, 71.1 x 50.2 being the result of a deductive process of abstraction from a model, the elements of
x 2.5 cm (28 x 19 ¾ x 1 in.). art would mean nothing other than themselves. As the most extreme form of anti-
Colección Patricia Phelps de representation, concrete art marked a difference from artists like Mondrian, Malevich,
Cisneros or Kandinsky, for whom abstraction was at some level a metaphoric representation or
even an allegory of a higher spiritual order. For the concrete artists, inspired by the Art
Concret manifesto of 1930: “The painting should be constructed entirely from purely
FIG. 6. Argentina. Raúl plastic elements, that is to say planes and colors. A pictorial element has no other
Lozza, Relieve n° 30 (Relief significance than itself and consequently the painting possesses no other significance
no. 30), 1946. Oil on than itself.”7 However, this “no other significance than itself” can mean a number of
plywood and metal, 41.9 x things, and these things can even reveal significant differences in intent.
53.7 x 2.7 cm (16 ½ x 21 ⅛ For the Argentine artists of the 1940s, the search for an objective, non-representa-
x 1 ⅛ in.). Colección Patricia tional language of art was inseparable from their political agenda. As sympathizers of
Phelps de Cisneros the extreme left, the members of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (including
Alfredo Hlito) founded in 1946 had declared their intention to rid art of all vestiges of
illusionism in order to make it an effective weapon in the class struggle. Through this
lens, objectivity was a moral imperative designed to push back against centuries of
art at the service of the ruling class that had used illusion (i.e. deception) as its main
resource. Of course to try to recover a communist geometrical abstraction in the
1940s was nothing if not naïve and uninformed, and the artists were duly expelled
from the Communist Party, but not before a very fertile period full of intense debate,

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exhibitions, manifestos, and events. In 1944 Rhod Rothfuss had published an article tions of approach due precisely to the unique antecedents in either case, and these
in the magazine Arturo [cat. 63, 64] which laid out the structured or irregular frame antecedents are certainly contextual. If we return to the 1930 Art Concret manifesto
as the most advanced development in international abstraction. Following his lead, and its call for an art that does not signify anything external to art, we can understand
Maldonado, Hlito, Prati, Melé, and many others worked through a variety of formal so- this in one of two ways: either the presentation of the pure elements of art (color,
lutions that built on this idea of a structured frame [fig. 5] . In late 1946, as the result line, shape) are important as a sign of an absolute truth, or they are meaningful only
of intense political/aesthetic debates, they developed the Coplanar as the definitive as plastic elements. In other words, art’s search for purity is either a moral and philo-
solution for an art that no longer contained any residue of illusionism by separating sophical parallel to a broader search for truth, or it is a mere formal exercise. The first
the forms in space [fig. 6] . Somewhere in late 1946/early 1947 two things happened position can be encapsulated in Johannes Kepler’s seventeenth century statement
that were determining for the group: on the one hand they were expelled from the geometria est archetypus pulchritudinis mundi, or geometry is the archetype of the
Communist Party, and on the other their formal solution turned out not to be as abso- beauty of the world.8 While for Kepler geometry was proof of God’s existence, it’s a
lute as they had hoped. The result of this crisis was that many artists stopped working, short leap to replace God with dialectical materialism, theosophy, or any other neo-
while a small group reconfigured around a return to the regular frame, creating works platonic system in which math is a metaphor for a deeper truth about the universe.
like the ones with which we started [fig. 7] . About this same time Maldonado trav- However, that same insistence on the pure elements of art can also be read as a call
eled to Europe and came into direct contact with Vantongerloo, Max Bill, and other for art for art’s sake, and can therefore be playful and unencumbered and nothing to
European artists, and started a relationship that would lead to his permanent move do with anything but itself. At the end of the day the question lies in whether art is a
to Europe in the 1950s and a long career as professor, philosopher, and designer. metaphor for a cosmic or social order or if it really exists just for its own perceptual
Maldonado returned to Argentina full of information about postwar European art sake, without aspiring to any consequence outside the artistic sphere. The argument
and started to develop an international network of exchange through magazines like also divides along political lines; the implicit materialism of the formalist position being
Nueva visión [cat. 79], which reported on contemporary developments in art and ar- either a denial or an affirmation of a utopian social project. For the Argentines, who
chitecture. While Maldonado, Hlito, and others were gradually moving the formal and had adopted the term concrete art from the outset, the crusade for art’s autonomy
ideological allegiance closer to Europe, the Madí artists, who had also sprung from was a direct equivalent of the battle for social justice and a key weapon in a broader
Arturo magazine, were developing in quite different directions, with a more anarchic political struggle. The geometric order represented in the works was a symbol of the
and irreverent philosophy. Although sharing the same roots, Madí and Arte Concreto- new social order that would be collective, objective, and rationally structured. In 1946
Invención artists in Buenos Aires were quite different in character and production, and Edgar Bayley made this point in the pages of Orientación, the organ of the Argentine
by 1947 there was almost nothing in common between them. Communist Party: “The artists and writers engaged in the concrete art movement
So back to our original question, following Maldonado’s contact with European base their aesthetics on an awareness of the world and the means through which it
concrete art, were the Argentines merely “accepting the dogma and doing it just as can be transformed. In all ages artistic style has corresponded to the manner in which
well” as the Europeans, as Romero Brest had suggested, or are there any significant productive forces were organized.”9
differences between these works? I would argue that there are in fact important varia- In mid-century Europe, in contrast, the implications of concrete art were rather
different, and this may be partly due to the direct experience of war, from which
Argentina was spared. While Van Doesburg’s pre-war concrete works [fig. 8] were
FIG. 7. Argentina. Tomás certainly indicative of a hard-edge geometry reduced to its starkest elements, by the
Maldonado, Desarrollo de time the movement’s principles were adopted in Switzerland or Paris the emphasis
un triángulo (Development had become looser and more playful. Max Bill, the leading figure in the postwar re-
of a Triangle), 1949. Oil on covery of the concrete art project, spoke of the need “to represent abstract thoughts
canvas, 80.6 x 60.3 cm (31 in a sensuous and tangible form.”10 Despite his reputation as a strict taskmaster,
¾ x 23 ¾ in.). Colección Bill’s work was surprisingly sensual, and works like Tripartite Unity [fig. 9] , famously
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros awarded the first prize in the 1951 Bienal de São Paulo, is anything but a severe and
harsh expression of geometry, yet it is geometrically perfect. Bill’s explorations of
curves, Moebius strips, and his series of variations on a theme gave concrete art a
more lyrical and playful character. Largely unencumbered by an ideological or political
project (he was Swiss after all), his works explored formal relationships largely for
their own sakes. Bill’s influence on a group of European artists was huge, albeit one
that is largely overlooked in European and North American accounts of art history.

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Ironically, it was in Latin America that this brand of concrete art was given new life and from this sketch and the finished painting is that Hlito’s concern was above all with
a renewed legacy through the dialogue between Bill, Lohse, Vantongerloo, and others compositional geometry and with the structure within the frame, while many of the
with artists across the Atlantic, north and south. Swiss works were concerned with chromatic relationships and serial sequences be-
Given this fundamental ideological difference between the Swiss and the yond the frame. In other words, one establishes a relational and lyrical system while
Argentine artists, we might ask ourselves why the works look so similar. What I think the other tries to create a rigid system of stable relationships. Rosalind Krauss has
was happening is that both groups were working in the same formal vocabulary, but written on the grid in modern art, and identifies two main schools: the grid as self-
with different intentions and diverse backgrounds. One helpful tool here is to look contained structure, and the grid as the implicit continuation beyond the frame. She
at the artists’ sketches, although very few survive, as these give us some helpful writes: “The within-the-frame grids are generally more materialist in character …
insights into the working process. If we look at the Swiss works [fig. 10] , we see a While beyond-the-frame examples often entail the dematerialization of the surface,
concern above all with color, and more specifically with variations between colors. In the dispersal of matter into the perceptual flicker or implied motion.”11 This analysis
these sketches we see relatively simple geometrical structures which serve to create would certainly explain the difference between Hlito’s within-the-frame grid, with
harmonic chromatic variations. Most of the annotations refer to the specific sequence its materialist basis and communist history, and the implied sequence of the Swiss
through which colors are set up to interact and mix. One of the results of this is that works with their greater interest in perceptual issues over politics. However, before
many of these works implicitly continue beyond the limits of the frame, as fragments this becomes too neat, there is an important exception among the Argentines: the
of a larger series extendable beyond the artwork itself. If we look at a sketch by Hlito work of Lidy Prati [fig. 13], which fully explores series and sequences that imply con-
[fig. 11] we can see almost the opposite process, where the geometric composition tinuity outside the frame. It is, however, an almost unique case, and coincidentally
is more important than the colors and the relationships. In this sketch Hlito starts she was probably the less committed to revolutionary politics of the group.
by dividing up the frame according to the divisions of half and of the golden mean. What may underlie these variations in approach are the different histories from
Although not all of the forms coincide with the underlying web, there is clearly a which these works evolve. For the Argentines the frame was the dominant issue
concern to relate the composition to an elementary system, and also to place it in since the proposal of the irregular frame in 1944, and although by 1947 the artists
dialogue with the frame. of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención had been expelled from the Communist
Now if we go back to Hlito’s drawing and look at the colors, we can see that the Party, they still maintained a belief in the utopian and absolute values of geometry. In
first attempt is to use the three primaries and black, as if in reference to Mondrian. contrast the Swiss had witnessed the ravages of extreme ideology close up, and saw
By the time we see the finished work, however [fig. 12], these have shifted to green, in the same history of geometric abstraction the potential for seriality and variation,
purple, and grey. I am not sure exactly why these changed, and the issue of color for art as a pattern and fragment of a sequence rather than a self-contained visual
is still a great unexplored area in these Argentine works, but what does seem clear manifesto connected to a political system. As María Amalia García puts it beautifully
when describing Bill: “The plastic-mathematical concept that Bill was proposing did
not refer to a cold numerical idea but rather to the human capacity for managing
relationships.”12
So if we have seen how apparently similar works can have diverse intentions
shaped by contextual factors, this also begs the question of how ideas flow between
different contexts, and how that information is then understood. To go back to 1944
and the magazine Arturo referred to before, we have a fairly typical scenario in Rhod
Rothfuss’s article “The Frame: A Problem in Contemporary Art” (featured in the docu-
mentary section of this catalogue), which was so important for the 1940s genera-
tion in Buenos Aires. Rothfuss’s article traces a line from the French Revolution and
FIG. 8. The Netherlands. Cézanne, through cubism, futurism, Kandinsky, and Mondrian, to the present day.
Theo van Doesburg, This exercise of writing a genealogy with oneself at the end was in itself fairly typical
Arithmetic Composition, of the modern project, and is part and parcel of the character of a manifesto. In this
1930. Oil on canvas, 101 x case, the frame was the central question, with Rothfuss arguing that none of his ar-
101 cm (39 ¾ x 39 ¾ in.). tistic predecessors had fully managed to break away from the centuries-old tradition
Kunstmuseum Winterthur of composing within a rectangle, and that his own work was the resolution of this
issue. He illustrated the article with two works other than his own: a Kandinsky and
a Mondrian, two artists he criticizes for limiting themselves to a regular frame, the

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FIG. 9. Switzerland. Max
Bill, Dreiteilige Einheit
(Tripartite Unity), 1948–49.
Stainless steel, 114 x 88.3
x 98.2 cm (44 ⅞ x 34 ¾
x 38 ⅝ in.). Museu de
Arte Contemporânea da
Universidade de São Paulo

Fig. 10. Switzerland. Richard FIG. 12. Argentina. Alfredo

Paul Lohse, Reihenelemente Hlito, Ritmos cromáticos
in rythmischen Gruppen III (Chromatic Rhythms III),
(Linear Elements in 1949. Oil on canvas, 100 x
Rhythmic Groups), 1945. 100 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ in.).
Pencil on paper, 21 x 27.5 cm Colección Patricia Phelps de
(8 ¼ x 10 ¾ in.). Richard Paul Cisneros
Lohse-Stiftung, Zurich
Fig. 11. Argentina. Alfredo
Hlito, Dibujo preparatorio
para Ritmos cromáticos
III (Study for Chromatic
Rhythms III), ca. 1949. Ink
and colored pencil on paper,
15.2 x 15.9 cm (6 x 6 ¼ in.).
Private collection

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Fundación Juan March

implication being that had they known better they would have wanted to break free.
I’d like to concentrate on the reproduction of the Mondrian. All the discussions of the
period in Argentina refer to Mondrian essentially as a concrete artist, in the sense
that his reductive geometry was seen, as it was by so many, as the end game of the
abstractionist project by reducing art to its most basic elements. When images are
reproduced like this in a magazine, not only are the colors and forms flattened, but
the images are also detached from their own discursive context, and that is how they
can come to be resignified elsewhere. Had the Argentines read Mondrian’s texts and
known more of his specific activities, they would have known that his work was far
from concrete art as they understood it, far from Russian constructivism, and yet he
did aspire to an environmental art expanding beyond the frame. By seeing the crudely
printed image without a broader understanding of his project, context, or writings, the
young artists read him as they could, in relation to their own interests in the frame and
in terms of an evolutionary project toward a Marxist artistic language.
In 1953, Alfredo Hlito traveled to Europe and came across his first real Mondrian
painting. The effect was traumatic and instant. He later wrote: “I realized that Mondrian’s
painting was not what I had imagined. He worked every painting, I saw that his white
backgrounds—that we had thought were painted entirely flat—had black lines that
were like valleys.”13 When we see the 1940s paintings of Hlito, Maldonado, and his
colleagues in Buenos Aires, the painted surface is invariably flat and pure, with the
artists consciously trying to eliminate any vestige of the human hand from their work,
which they wanted to have as close to an industrial finish as possible. When looking at
the magazine reproductions of Mondrian’s work it is easy to come to the conclusion
that he was doing the same, and that his paintings were equally severe and harsh,
when in fact they are marked by hesitation and by quite conscious brushwork. What
happened in 1953 was that Hlito suddenly realized the difference between his reading
of the reproduction and his encounter with the original. Even if he did not necessarily
research the artist’s production extensively at this point, he was able to read the im-
age in painterly terms as the result of a more intuitive and tentative process than the
strict deductive process we saw in his own work earlier. The effect was so strong that
he abandoned hard-edge geometry altogether and became a central artist in a move-
ment called “geometria sensível” or sensitive geometry, which was posited in the
1960s and 1970s by the Brazilian critic Roberto Pontual as a Latin American response
to hard-edge abstraction. It is tempting when looking at where Hlito went to think
that he once again misunderstood Mondrian, but of course the point is not to make
a value judgment but to understand the process of creative misreading that seems
to intensify when the physical distance between a phenomenon and its reading is Fig. 13. Argentina. Lidy Prati,
greater. What we have in Hlito’s case is an artist who first reads Mondrian through Composición serial (Serial
reproduction and comes to one conclusion, then reads him as a painter and comes to Composition), ca. 1948. Oil on
another, entirely different one. hardboard, 75.3 x 55.8 (29 ⅝ x 22
So to go back to where we started, we might ask ourselves why Vantongerloo and in.). Malba – Fundación Costantini,
Lohse also painted in flat and perfect planes when they must have seen Mondrian’s Buenos Aires

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Fundación Juan March

work close up, which destroys our hypothesis that the distance between Europe and 12 María Amalia García, “Max Bill on the Map of Argentine-Brazilian Concrete Art,” in Mari
Latin America was the determining factor in why they read Mondrian a certain way. Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, eds., Building on a Construct: The Adolpho Leirner
Surely they had seen the originals, the difference is that they would also, like Hlito Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston: The
in 1947, have been looking for a pure expression of geometry and the articulation of Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 61.
grid within which to create serial variations. In 1953 Hlito saw the imperfections of 13 Alfredo Hlito, Escritos sobre arte (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1995),
Mondrian because he was already at some deep level dissatisfied with the concrete 205–6.
art project and looking for his identity as a painter, just as so many would continue
to see Mondrian as an inspiration for the most diverse artistic projects. At the end of
the day none of these interpretations is any more or less valid than the other; all we
can say with some certainty is that to create, an artist must read and interpret his or
her predecessors. The intention with which we started the discussion will inevitably
shape what they see as much as what they then create. Perhaps context boils down
to, rather than geography, nationality, distance, or borders, a question of reading
seen through a lens of desire.

ENDNOTES

1 This essay is a reworking of a paper presented at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York
University, on April 15, 2010, under the title “The Reinvention of European Abstraction in
Argentina 1944–1950.” I am grateful to Mary Kate O’Hare for her helpful readings of the early
drafts.
2 Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America.
(Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). This exhibition
was first presented in 2000 under the title Heteropías at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia in Madrid.
3 Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, ed., The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (Austin: Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at
Austin, 2007).
4 I am grateful to Luis Pérez-Oramas for this comparison.
5 Jorge Romero Brest, “La crisis del arte en Latinoamérica y el mundo,” in Damián Bayón, ed.,
América Latina en sus artes (Mexico City: UNESCO/Siglo XXI, 1974), 94.
6 John Elderfield, Geometric Abstraction 1926­–1942 (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1972), n. p.
7 Quoted in Gladys Fabre and Doris Wintgens Hötte, eds., Van Doesburg and the International
Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World (London: Tate Publishing, 2009), 187.
8 Quoted in Ernst Peter Fischer, Beauty and the Beast: The Aesthetic Moment in Science (New
York: Plenum Press, 1999), 7.
9 Edgar Bayley, “Sobre Arte Concreto,” reproduced in Nelly Perazzo, Vanguardias de la década
del 40 (Buenos Aires: Museo Sívori, 1980), n.p., and in this catalogue.
10 Quoted on Tate: British and International Modern and Contemporary Art (accessed December
1, 2010).
11 Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 21.

75

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76

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works on display

77

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The section devoted to the works on view includes
both artworks and historical documents in various
formats (mainly magazines and manifestoes) arranged
by date and geographic location: Uruguay, Germán
Cueto’s Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Leo
Matiz’s Colombia, Cuba, and a final coda on the
historical context of Europe during the 1970s. For
comparative and contextual reasons, illustrations of
works and documents not on view at the exhibition
are also featured in this section. Entries for these
illustrations are not preceded by a “[cat.]” reference.

78

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 Uruguay

79

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CAT. 1
Joaquín Torres-García
Construction in White and Black, 1930
Painted wood
48.9 x 35.6 x 8 cm (19 ¼ x 14 x 3 ⅛ in.)
Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza
on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Madrid (CTB 1999.18)

80

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CAT. 2
Joaquín Torres-García
Untitled, 1930
Oil on canvas stretched over plywood
73 x 60 cm (28 ¾ x 23 ⅝ in.)
Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Musée national d’art moderne/
Centre de création industrielle
Donation, 1993 (AM 1993-58)

81

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CAT. 3
Joaquín Torres-García
Construction in White and Black, 1938
Oil on paper mounted on wood
80.7 x 102 cm (31 ¾ x 40 ⅛ in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
in honor of David Rockefeller, 2004 (331.2004)

82

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CAT. 4
Joaquín Torres-García
Constructivist Construction
with Geometric Forms, 1943
Oil on cardboard
52 x 69 cm (20 ½ x 27 ⅛ in.)
Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Musée national d’art moderne/
Centre de création industrielle
Donated to State by the artist’s family in 1956
allotted in 1956 (AM 3415 P)

83

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 CAT. 7
CAT. 5 José Pedro Costigliolo
José Pedro Costigliolo Composition, 1958
Untitled, 1947 Ink on card
Gouache on paper 85 x 61 cm (33 ½ x 24 in.)
19.3 x 15.5 cm (7 ⅞ x 6 ⅛ in.) Museo Nacional Centro de
Fundación Privada Allegro Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (DE00709)

84

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CAT. 6
José Pedro Costigliolo
Composition, 1953–54
Lacquer on metal
70 x 92 cm (27 ⅝ x 36 ⅛ in.)
Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (AD03428)

85

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CAT. 8
María Freire
Untitled, 1954
Oil on canvas
92 x 122 cm (36 ⅛ x 48 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

86

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CAT. 9 CAT. 10
María Freire María Freire
V.N.A., 1957 Composition, 1958
Lacquer on wood Ink on card
162 x 112 cm (63 ¾ x 44 ⅛ in.) 77.8 x 61 cm (30 ⅝ x 24 in.)
Museo Nacional Centro de Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (AD03427) Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (DO00592)

87

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CAT. 11 CAT. 12 CAT. 13
Torres-García: obras retrospectivas Joaquín Torres-García Joaquín Torres-García
y recientes desde 1898 hasta 1934 Manifiesto 1 Estructura
Montevideo: Amigos del Montevideo: Asociación de Arte Montevideo: Biblioteca Alfar, 1935
Arte, June 1934 Constructivo, August 1934 Book
Catalogue of Joaquín Torres-García’s Printed paper 20 x 15 cm (8 x 6 in.)
first exhibition in Uruguay 32.5 x 20.5 cm (12 ¾ x 8 ⅛ in.) Collection José María Lafuente
16.5 x 12 cm (6 ½ x 4 ¾ in.) Collection José María Lafuente
Collection José María Lafuente

88

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CAT. 15 CAT. 16 CAT. 17
Joaquín Torres-García Joaquín Torres-García Joaquín Torres-García
Manifiesto 2 La tradición del hombre abstracto: Metafísica de la prehistoria
Montevideo: Asociación de doctrina constructivista indoamericana
Arte Constructivo, 1938 Montevideo: Asociación de Montevideo: Asociación de
Printed paper Arte Constructivo, 1938 Arte Constructivo, 1939
19 x 14 cm (7 ½ x 5 ½ in.) Book Book
Collection José María Lafuente 21 x 16 cm (8 ¼ x 6 ¼ in.) 19.3 x 14.4 cm (7 ⅝ x 5 ¾ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente Collection José María Lafuente

89

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CAT. 14
Círculo y Cuadrado
Montevideo: Asociación de
Arte Constructivo, 1936–43
Magazine
30 x 20.5 cm (11 ¾ x 8 ⅛ in.)
14.1. No. 1, May 1936
14.2. No. 2, August 1936
14.3. No. 3, February 1937
14.4. No. 4, May 1937
14.5. No. 5, September 1937
14.6. No. 6, March 1938
14.7. No. 7, September 1938
14.8. Nos. 8–9–10, December 1943
Collection José María Lafuente

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 91

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CAT. 18
Joaquín Torres-García
Handwritten biography on paper with
the Asociación de Arte Constructivo
(AAC) letterhead, not before 1938
28.5 x 22.5 cm (11 ⅛ x 8 ⅞ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

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CAT. 19 CAT. 20
Joaquín Torres-García Joaquín Torres-García
Historia de mi vida Manifiesto 3
Montevideo: Asociación de Montevideo: Asociación de
Arte Constructivo, 1939 Arte Constructivo, 1940
Book Printed paper
18 x 14.5 cm (7 ⅛ x 5 ¾ in.) 19.3 x 14 cm (7 ⅝ x 5 ½ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente Collection José María Lafuente

93

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CAT. 21
Joaquín Torres-García
Lo aparente y lo concreto en el arte. Montevideo:
Asociación de Arte Constructivo, 1947–48
Pamphlets comprising texts of lessons given
by Joaquín Torres-García at the Faculty of
Humanities and Sciences, Montevideo
21 x 16.5 cm (8 ¼ x 6 ½ in.)
No. 1, July 1947
No. 2, August 1947
No. 3, October 1947
No. 4, December 1947
No. 5, February 1948
Collection José María Lafuente

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 95

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96

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 Mexico

97

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CAT. 26 CAT. 27
Germán Cueto Germán Cueto
Stockholm: Svensk-Franska Konstgallerie, 1954 Göteborg: Galleri Aveny, 1955
Exhibition brochure Exhibition brochure
21 x 13.8 cm (8 ¼ x 5 ⅜ in.) 21.2 x 14 cm (8 ¼ x 5 ½ in.)
Courtesy Freijo Fine Art Courtesy Freijo Fine Art
Galería de arte y proyectos Galería de arte y proyectos

98

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CAT. 22
Germán Cueto
Planes (Homage to musician
Silvestre Revueltas), 1940
Oil on wood
40 x 50 cm (15 ¾ x 19 ¾ in.)
Private collection. Courtesy Freijo Fine Art
Galería de arte y proyectos

99

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 CAT. 23 CAT. 24
Germán Cueto Germán Cueto
Geometric Form, 1944 Abstract Form (Sculpture Study), 1944
Pencil on paper Pencil on paper
31 x 23.5 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¼ in.) 31 x 23.5 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¼ in.)
Collection Freijo. Courtesy Freijo Fine Art Collection Freijo. Courtesy Freijo Fine Art
Galería de arte y proyectos Galería de arte y proyectos

100

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CAT. 25
Germán Cueto
Estela, 1950
Ceramic (stoneware)
24 x 18 x 4 cm (9 ⅜ x 7 ⅛ x 1 ⅝ in.)
Collection Freijo. Courtesy Freijo Fine Art
Galería de arte y proyectos

101

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102

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Argentina

103

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CAT. 28
Esteban Lisa
Composition, ca. 1935
Oil on cardboard
30 x 23 cm (11 ¾ x 9 ⅛ in.)
Collection Jorge Virgili, Madrid

104

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CAT. 29 CAT. 30
Esteban Lisa Esteban Lisa
Composition, ca. 1935–40 Composition, ca. 1935–40
Oil on cardboard Oil on cardboard
30 x 23 cm (11 ¾ x 9 ⅛ in.) 30 x 23 cm (11 ¾ x 9 ⅛ in.)
Collection Jorge Virgili, Madrid Collection Jorge Virgili, Madrid

105

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CAT. 31
Juan del Prete
Composition with Geometric Elements, 1949
Oil on cardboard
39.5 x 43 cm (15 ⅝ x 16 ⅞ in.)
Private collection

106

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CAT. 32
Juan Bay
Composition, 1950
Oil on plywood
48 x 38 cm (18 ⅞ x 15 in.)
Private collection

107

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CAT. 34
Rod Rothfuss
Yellow Rectangle, 1955
Paint on wood
37 x 30 cm (14 ⅝ x 11 ¾ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

108

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CAT. 33
Rod Rothfuss
3 Red Circles, 1948
Enamel on wood
100.5 x 64.2 x 1.5 cm (39 ⅝ x 25 ¼ x ⅝ in.)
Malba - Fundación Costantini,
Buenos Aires (2001.142)

109

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CAT. 35
Carmelo Arden Quin
Untitled or Composition, 1945
Oil on cardboard and lacquered wood
39 x 30 cm (15 ⅜ x 11 ¾ in.)
Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires (2001.03)

110

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CAT. 260
Carmelo Arden Quin
Untitled, 1959
Paper
31 x 21.7 cm (12 ¼ x 8 ½ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

111

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CAT. 36
Gyula Kosice
Mobile Articulated Sculpture, 1945
Bronze strips, chrome patina
65 x 53.5 x 51 cm (25 ⅝ x 21 ⅛ x 20 ⅛ in.)
Private collection

112

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CAT. 37
Gyula Kosice
Liberated Planes and Color, 1947
Enamel on plywood
70 x 55 cm (27 ⅝ x 21 ¾ in.)
Private collection

113

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CAT. 38
Martin Blaszko
Madí Figure, 1946
Bronze, green patina
70 x 31 x 14.4 cm (27 ⅝ x 12 ⅛ x 5 ¾ in.)
Private collection

114

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CAT. 39
Martin Blaszko
Madí Column, 1947
Painted wood
75.5 x 20.5 x 9.3 cm (29 ¾ x 8 ⅛ x 3 ¾ in.)
Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires (2001.39)

115

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CAT. 40
Juan Melé
Cropped Frame no. 3, 1946
Oil on wood
85 x 55 cm (33 ½ x 21 ¾ in.)
Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori, Buenos Aires

116

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CAT. 42
Manuel Espinosa
Painting, 1945
Oil on chipboard
88 x 47 cm (34 ⅝ x 18 ½ in.)
Private collection

117

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CAT. 43
Manuel Espinosa
Untitled, 1945
Oil on chipboard
55 x 60 cm (21 ¾ x 23 ⅝ in.)
Museo de Artes Plásticas
Eduardo Sívori, Buenos Aires

118

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CAT. 44
Manuel Espinosa
Untitled, 1950
Gouache on paper
69.8 x 33.3 cm (27 ½ x 13 ⅛ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

119

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CAT. 45
Enio Iommi
Opposing Directions, 1945
Polychromed iron and copper
87.5 x 84 x 63.5 cm
(34 ⅜ x 33 ⅛ x 25 in.)
Private collection

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CAT. 46 CAT. 47
Enio Iommi Enio Iommi
Interrupted Continuity, 1948 Linear Rhythm, 1949
Enamel on metal over black granite base Steel wire and stone
62.3 x 45 x 32 cm (24 ½ x 17 ¾ x 12 ⅝ in.) 62.6 x 33.5 x 48.4 cm
Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires (2001.98) (24 ⅝ x 13 ⅛ x 19 ⅛ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

121

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 CAT. 48
Lidy Prati
Concrete or Untitled, 1945
Oil on plywood
62 x 48 cm (24 ⅜ x 18 ⅞ in.)
Private collection

122

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CAT. 49 CAT. 50
Lidy Prati Lidy Prati
Untitled, ca. 1945 Infinite Vibration, 1953
Mixed media on canvas Synthetic enamel on canvas
39 x 39 cm (15 ⅜ x 15 ⅜ in.) 40 x 50 cm (15 ¾ x 19 ¾ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection Raul Naon

123

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CAT. 51
Tomás Maldonado
Untitled, 1948
Oil on canvas
100 x 70 cm (39 ⅜ x 27 ⅝ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

124

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CAT. 52
Tomás Maldonado
Tensions of Mathematical Origin, 1950
Oil on canvas
100 x 70 cm (39 ⅜ x 27 ⅝ in.)
Collection Raul Naon

125

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CAT. 53
Tomás Maldonado
Untitled, ca. 1950
Oil on canvas
110 x 85 cm (43 ¼ x 33 ½ in.)
Museo de Artes Plásticas
Eduardo Sívori, Buenos Aires

126

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CAT. 54
Tomás Maldonado
Theme on Red, 1953
Oil on canvas
99.5 x 100 cm (39 ⅛ x 39 ⅜ in.)
Private collection

127

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 CAT. 55
Alfredo Hlito
Linear Construction, 1952
Oil on canvas
100 x 72 cm (39 ⅜ x 28 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (AD03243)

128

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CAT. 56
Alfredo Hlito
Forms and Lines on the Plane or Painting, 1952
Oil on canvas
100 x 100 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ in.)
Private collection

129

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CAT. 57
Alfredo Hlito
Derivation of the Square, 1954
Oil on canvas
55 x 45 cm (21 ¾ x 17 ¾ in.)
Galeria Guillermo de Osma, Madrid (664)

130

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CAT. 61
Luis Tomasello
Untitled, 1956
Oil on wood
70 x 60 cm (27 ⅝ x 23 ⅝ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

131

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CAT. 58
Raúl Lozza
Painting no. 21, 1945
Oil on plywood
55.6 x 45 cm (21 ⅞ x 17 ¾ in.)
Private collection

132

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CAT. 41
Juan Melé
Coplanar no. 18, 1947
Oil on canvas
47 x 50 cm (18 ½ x 19 ¾ in.)
Collection Raul Naon

133

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 CAT. 59 CAT. 60
Raúl Lozza Raúl Lozza
Sketch 184, 1948 Perceptist Period
Graphite on paper Painting no. 184, 1948
84 x 63 cm (33 ⅛ x 24 ¾ in.) Polished enamel on wood
Collection Raul Naon 122 x 122 cm (48 x 48 in.)
Museo de Artes
Plásticas Eduardo
Sívori, Buenos Aires

134

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 135

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CAT. 62
César Paternosto
The Sweetest Skin, 1970
Acrylic emulsion on canvas
150.2 x 150.2 x 9.6 cm
(59 ⅛ x 59 ⅛ x 3 ¾ in.)
Junta de Andalucía - Centro
Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (CE0442)

136

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César Paternosto
Sequential, 1972
Acrylic on canvas
137.2 x 203.2 cm (54 x 80 in.)
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Buffalo, NY. Donation
Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1972

137

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CAT. 63 and 64
Arturo 1, Buenos Aires,
summer 1944
Front and back covers by
Tomás Maldonado
Magazine
27.5 x 20 cm (10 ¾ x 7 ⅞ in.)
Collection Raul Naon

138

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CAT. 65
El caballero invisible. Anónimo
español del siglo XVII. Buenos
Aires: Ediciones UBU, 1944
Contains 4 illustrations by Rod
Rothfuss, hand-colored by the artist
(lithographs highlighted with gouache)
Artist book
Edition: 50/100
34.5 x 25.5 cm (13 ⅝ x 10 in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

139

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140

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 141

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CAT. 66 CAT. 67
Elias Piterbarg Invención, 1945
Tratado del amor. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Cenit, 1944 Magazine
Illustrations by Tomás Maldonado 20 x 14.5 cm (7 ⅞ x 5 ¾ in.)
Book 67.1. No. 1, Kósice
27 x 18.5 cm (10 ⅝ x 7 ¼ in.) 67.2. No. 2, Bayley
Collection José María Lafuente Collection José María Lafuente

142

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CAT. 68 CAT. 69
Arte Concreto Invención 1 Boletín de la Asociación de Arte Concreto
Buenos Aires, August 1946 Invención 2
Magazine Buenos Aires, December 1946
31.7 x 22 cm (12 ½ x 8 ¾ in.) Printed paper
Collection Raul Naon 31 x 22.5 cm (12 ⅛ x 8 ⅞ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

143

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 CAT. 70 CAT. 71
1ª exposición de la Asociación Manifiesto Madí
Arte Concreto–Invención, Buenos Buenos Aires, June 1946
Aires, March 18–April 3, 1946 Printed paper
Catalogue 25 x 17 cm (9 ¾ x 6 ¾ in.)
22 x 12 cm (8 ¾ x 4 ¾ in.) Collection José María Lafuente
Private collection

144

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CAT. 72
Lucio Fontana and students
Manifiesto blanco, 1946
Printed paper
23.5 x 17.7 cm (9 ¼ x 7 in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

145

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CAT. 73 and 74
Arte Madí Universal, Buenos Aires, 1947–54
Magazine
73.1 y 74.1. No. 0, 1947
31 x 25 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¾ in.)
74.2. No. 2, 1948
31 x 25 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¾ in.)
73.2 y 74.3. No. 3, 1949
31 x 25 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¾ in.)
73.3 y 74.4. No. 4, 1950
31 x 25 cm (12 ⅛ x 9 ¾ in.)
74.5. No. 5, 1951
23 x 19 cm (9 ⅛ x 7 ½ in.)
73.4 y 74.6. No. 6, 1952
23 x 19 cm (9 ⅛ x 7 ½ in.)
74.7. Nos. 7–8, 1954
23 x 19 cm (9 ⅛ x 7 ½ in.)
Collection Raul Naon (CAT. 73)
Collection José María Lafuente (CAT. 74)

146

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CAT. 75 CAT. 76 and 77
Contemporánea, year 1, No. 1 Perceptismo, 1950–53
Buenos Aires, August 1948 Magazine
Magazine 40 x 29 cm (15 ¾ x 11 ⅜ in.)
36.5 x 28.5 cm (14 ⅜ x 11 ⅛ in.) 76 y 77.1. No. 1, October 1950
Collection José María Lafuente 77.2. No. 2, August 1951
77.3. No. 3, November 1951
77.4. No. 4, May 1952
77.5. No. 5, July-August 1952
77.6. No. 6, January 1953
77.7. No. 7, July 1953
Collection Raul Naon ( CAT. 76)
Collection José María Lafuente ( CAT. 77)

148

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 149

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CAT. 78
Original sketch for magazine
Perceptismo 4, 1952
Pencil on paper
41 x 29.5 cm (16 ⅛ x 11 ⅝ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

150

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 151

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CAT. 79
Nueva Visión. Magazine de cultura
visual, Buenos Aires, 1951–57
30 x 21 cm (11 ¾ x 8 ¼ in.)
79. 1. No. 1, December 1951
79. 2. Nos. 2–3, January 1953
79. 3. No. 4, 1953
79. 4. No. 5, 1954
79. 5. No. 6, 1955
79. 6. No. 7, 1955
79. 7. No. 8, 1955
79. 8. No. 9, 1957
Collection José María Lafuente

152

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 153

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 CAT. 80
acht argentijnse abstracten.
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1953
Exhibition catalogue
26 x 19 cm (10 ¼ x 7 ½ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

154

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CAT. 81
acht argentijnse abstracten
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1953
Exhibition poster
52 x 76 cm (20 ½ x 30 in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

155

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CAT. 82
a. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nueva Visión, 1956–58
Envelope and publication
82.1. No. 1, August 1956
38 x 28 cm (15 x 11 in.)
82.2. No. 2, March 1957
38 x 28 cm (15 x 11 in.)
82.3. No. 3, March 1958
32 x 28.5 cm (12 ⅝ x 11 ⅛ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente

156

Fundación Juan March

 157

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158

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 Brazil

159

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CAT. 83
Max Bill
Quinze variations sur un même thème
Paris: Éditions des Chroniques du jour, 1938
83.1. Portfolio of silkscreen prints
83.2. Thème
83.3. Variation 1
83.4. Variation 3
32 x 30.8 cm (12 ⅝ x 12 ⅛ in.)
Dan Galeria, São Paulo

160

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 161

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CAT. 84
Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Study for Nocturne, 1951
Oil on wood
53.4 x 53.2 cm (21 x 20 ⅞ in.)
Tate, London. Presented by The Josef
and Anni Albers Foundation, 2006 (T12215)

162

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CAT. 85
Waldemar Cordeiro
Untitled, 1949
Oil on canvas
73.5 x 54.5 cm (28 ⅞ x 21 ⅜ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

163

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164

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CAT. 86
Waldemar Cordeiro
Visible Idea, 1956
Acrylic on plywood
59.9 x 60 cm (23 ⅝ x 23 ⅝ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

165

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CAT. 87
Antônio Maluf
Poster Study for I Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil, 1951
Gouache on cardboard
98.3 x 65.6 cm (38 ¾ x 25 ¾ in.)
Collection Rose Maluf

166

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CAT. 88
Antônio Maluf
Poster for I Bienal de São
Paulo of the Museu de Arte
Moderna, São Paulo, 1951
Lithograph
94 x 63.5 cm (37 x 25 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of the Museu de
Arte Moderna de São Paulo,
1951 (576.1951)

167

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Antônio Maluf
Blue version of the poster for
I Bienal de São Paulo, 1951
Offset
93 x 63 cm (36 ½ x 24 ¾ in.)
Private collection

168

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Antônio Maluf
Red version of the poster for
I Bienal de São Paulo, 1951
Offset
93 x 63 cm (36 ½ x 24 ¾ in.)
Private collection

169

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Antônio Maluf
Black version of the poster for
I Bienal de São Paulo, 1951
Offset
93 x 63 cm (36 ½ x 24 ¾ in.)
Private collection

170

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 89
Alexandre Wollner
Poster for III Bienal de São
Paulo of the Museu de Arte
Moderna, São Paulo, 1955
Digital print, 2010
96 x 64 cm (37 ¾ x 25 ¼ in.)
Private collection

171

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 90
Alexandre Wollner
Poster for IV Bienal de São
Paulo of the Museu de Arte
Moderna, São Paulo, 1957
Digital print, 2010
96 x 64 cm (37 ¾ x 25 ¼ in.)
Private collection

172

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 91
Almir Mavignier
Poster for VII Bienal de São Paulo, 1963
Silkscreen print
93 x 63 cm (36 ⅝ x 24 ¾ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de São
Paulo. Gift of the artist (2000.176)

173

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CAT. 92 CAT. 93
Geraldo de Barros Geraldo de Barros
Station of Light - SP, 1949 The Birds - RJ, 1950
Vintage silver-gelatin print Vintage silver-gelatin print
30.7 x 30.2 cm (12 ⅛ x 11 ⅞ in.) 30.1 x 40 cm (11 ⅞ x 15 ¾ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo
Sponsored by Petrobras (2001.027) Sponsored by Petrobras (2001.031)

174

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CAT. 94 CAT. 95
Geraldo de Barros Geraldo de Barros
Photoform, São Paulo, 1950 Untitled - Seville - Spain, 1951
Vintage silver-gelatin print Vintage silver-gelatin print, 1970
40 x 30.1 cm (15 ¾ x 11 ⅞ in.) 30.1 x 40.2 cm (11 ⅞ x 15 ¾ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, on loan
Sponsored by Petrobras (2001.032) from Eduardo Brandão and Jan Fjeld (CM2006.032)

175

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CAT. 102 CAT. 103
German Lorca German Lorca
Crossed Curves II, 1955 Homage to Mondrian, 1960
Silver-gelatin print Vintage silver-gelatin print
43.8 x 44 cm (17 ⅛ x 17 ¼ in.) 57.8 x 46.5 cm (22 ¾ x 18 ¼ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Acquisition
Paulo. Gift of the artist (2006.152) of Núcleo Contemporâneo MAM-SP (2002.083)

176

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 97
Thomaz Farkas
Roof Tiles. Recortes series, São Paulo, SP, ca. 1945
Silver-gelatin print
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles

177

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 98 CAT. 99
Thomaz Farkas Thomaz Farkas
Recortes series, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, ca. 1945 Ceiling of Ipiranga Cinema, São Paulo, SP, ca. 1945
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
31 x 30 cm (12 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.) 28 x 27 cm (11 x 10 ½ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

178

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 100 CAT. 101
Thomaz Farkas Thomaz Farkas
Recortes series, ca. 1945 Canopy of Pampulha Casino, Belho Horizonte, MG, ca. 1949
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
29.7 x 30.5 cm (11 ¾ x 12 in.) 31 x 30 cm (12 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

179

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 96
Gaspar Gasparian
Cubist Composition, ca. 1950
Vintage silver-gelatin print
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

180

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 104
Haruo Ohara
Cyclone. Londrina - PR, 1957
Silver-gelatin print
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles

181

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 105 CAT. 107
Haruo Ohara Haruo Ohara
Marcha. Terra Boa - PR, 1958 Composition, 1964
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
30 x 31 cm (11 ¾ x 12 ¼ in.) 45 x 45 cm (17 ¾ x 17 ¾ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

182

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 106
Haruo Ohara
The Drought. Tres Bocas Factory Dam, Londrina, PR, 1959
Silver-gelatin print
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles

183

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 108 CAT. 109
Haruo Ohara Haruo Ohara
Originality. Londrina, PR, 1969 Abstract, House on Rua São Jerônimo, Londrina, PR, 1969
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
45 x 45 cm (17 ¾ x 17 ¾ in.) 40 x 29.5 cm (15 ¾ x 11 ⅝ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

184

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 110 CAT. 111
José Yalenti José Yalenti
Architecture no. 7, ca. 1960s Fasciceiro, ca. 1960s
Inkjet print on cotton paper, 2006 Vintage silver-gelatin print
Reproduction of an original, unique print 37.5 x 47.2 cm (14 ¾ x 18 ⅝ in.)
41.5 x 44.9 cm (16 ¼ x 17 ¾ in.) Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

185

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 113 CAT. 112
Marcel Gautherot Marcel Gautherot
Detail of Metallic Structure of Ministries, Ministry Buildings, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1958
Brasilia, DF, ca. 1958 Silver-gelatin print
Silver-gelatin print 31 x 30 cm (12 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.)
31 x 30 cm (12 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.) Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro
Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro

186

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 114 CAT. 115
Marcel Gautherot Marcel Gautherot
Detail of Metallic Structure of Metropolitan Cathedral of Nossa Senhora
Ministries, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1958 Aparecida with Ministeries Esplanade in
Silver-gelatin print Background, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1960
31 x 30 cm (12 ¼ x 11 ¾ in.) Silver-gelatin print
Instituto Moreira Salles 47 x 47 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles

187

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 116 CAT. 117
Marcel Gautherot Marcel Gautherot
Palácio do Congresso Nacional, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1960 Palácio do Congresso Nacional, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1960
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
47 x 47 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ in.) 47 x 47 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

188

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 118 CAT. 119
Marcel Gautherot Marcel Gautherot
Palácio do Congresso Nacional, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1960 Palácio da Alvorada, Brasilia, DF, ca. 1962
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
47 x 47 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ in.) 47 x 47 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ in.)
Instituto Moreira Salles Instituto Moreira Salles

189

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 122
Ivan Serpa
Untitled, 1954
Oil on canvas
116.2 x 89.5 cm (45 ¾ x 35 ¼ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

190

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 120
Alexander Calder
Red Angel Fish Mobile, 1957
Painted metal
102 x 148 x 58 cm (40 ¼ x 58 ¼ x 22 ¾ in.)
Private collection

191

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 123
Alfredo Volpi
White and Red Concrete Composition, 1955
Tempera on canvas
54 x 100 cm (21 ¼ x 39 ⅜ in.)
Collection Rose and Alfredo Setubal

192

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 126
Alfredo Volpi
Triangles – Black Background, ca. 1970
Tempera on canvas
136 x 68 cm (53 ½ x 26 ¾ in.)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía, Madrid (AD02513)

193

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 124
Alfredo Volpi
Façade with Flags, 1959
Tempera on canvas
116 x 72 cm (45 ¾ x 28 ¼ in.)
MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis
Chateaubriand, São Paulo (1237 P)

194

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 125
Alfredo Volpi
Façade IV, 1960
Tempera on canvas
72 x 48 cm (28 ¼ x 18 ⅞ in.)
Fundação José e Paulina
Nemirovsky, São Paulo (153)

195

Fundación Juan March

196

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 121
Geraldo de Barros
Diagonal Function, 1952
Lacquer on plywood
62.9 x 62.9 x 1.3 cm (24 ¾ x 24 ¾ x ½ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

197

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 128
Amilcar de Castro
Untitled, n. d.
Cut steel
29 x 30.5 x 20 cm
(11 ⅜ x 12 x 7 ⅞ in.)
Fundação José e Paulina
Nemirovsky, São Paulo (145)

198

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 127
Franz Weissmann
Composition with Semicircles, 1953
Aluminum
81 x 64.7 x 56.1 cm
(31 ⅞ x 25 ½ x 22 ⅛ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

199

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 129
Judith Lauand
Spatial Construction with Triangles and Straight Lines, 1954
Synthetic paint on chipboard
45 x 45 cm (17 ¾ x 17 ¾ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

200

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 130
Judith Lauand
Concrete 18, 1956
Synthetic paint on chipboard
30 x 30.2 cm (11 ¾ x 11 ⅞ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

201

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 131
Hermelindo Fiaminghi
Circles with Alternating Movement, 1956
Paint on chipboard
60 x 35 cm (23 ⅝ x 13 ¾ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de
São Paulo. Acquisition of Banco
Bradesco S. A. (1999.026)

202

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 132
Hermelindo Fiaminghi
Alternating 2, 1957
Lacquer on chipboard
61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

203

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 134
Hércules Barsotti
Black/White, 1959–61
Oil and sand on canvas
50 x 100 cm (19 ¾ x 39 ⅜ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

204

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 136
Lothar Charoux
Re-established Equilibrium, 1960
Gouache and acrylic on paper
50 x 50 cm (19 ¾ x 19 ¾ in.)
Collection Glaucia and Peter
Cohn, São Paulo

205

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 133 CAT. 135
Hércules Barsotti Hércules Barsotti
Black and White II, ca. 1959–60 Project III, n. d.
Ink on paper India ink on paper
21.5 x 9 cm (8 ½ x 3 ½ in.) 9.5 x 9.5 x 4.2 cm (3 ¾ x 3 ¾ x 1 ¾ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Fundación Privada Allegro

206

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 138
Lothar Charoux
Rhythm, 1970
Oil on canvas
100 x 35 cm (39 ⅜ x 13 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

207

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 137
Lothar Charoux
Composition, 1968
Gouache on paper
35 x 37 cm (13 ¾ x 14 ⅝ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

208

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 139
Mira Schendel
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas
23 x 28 cm (9 ⅛ x 11 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

209

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 140
Rubem Valentim
Untitled, 1956–62
Oil on canvas
70.2 x 50.2 cm
(27 ⅝ x 19 ¾ in.)
Colección Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros

210

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 142
Hélio Oiticica
Untitled (Grupo Frente), 1955
Gouache on cardboard
40 x 40 cm (15 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Colección. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

211

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 141
Lygia Pape
Untitled, 1956
Acrylic on plywood
35 x 35 x 8 cm (13 ¾ x 13 ¾ x 3 ⅛ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

212

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 165
Lygia Pape
Untitled, 1961
Acrylic on plywood
50 x 50 x 10.5 cm (19 ¾ x 19 ¾ x 4 ⅛ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

213

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 144
Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Décio
Pignatari, Ronaldo Azeredo, José Lino Grünewald
Noigandres, São Paulo, 1952–62
Magazine
144.1. No. 3, poesia concreta, December 1956
23 x 16 cm (9 ⅛ x 6 ¼ in.)
144.2. No. 4, poesia concreta, March 1958
Silkscreen print on cover by Hermelindo Fiaminghi
40 x 28.9 cm (15 ¾ x 11 ⅜ in.)
144.3. No. 5, antologia: do verso à poesia concreta, 1962
Constructivist work on cover by Alfredo Volpi
23 x 16 cm (9 ⅛ x 6 ¼ in.)
Private collection

214

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 145 CAT. 146
Ferreira Gullar José Lino Grünewald
O Formigueiro, 1955. Rio de Janeiro: Um e dois. São Paulo, 1958
Edição Europa, 1991 Book
Book 24 x 16 cm (9 ⅜ x 6 ¼ in.)
28.7 x 21.5 cm (11 ¼ x 8 ½ in.) Private collection
Fundación Juan March, Madrid

215

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 149
Augusto de Campos
Cubagramma, 1960–62
Concrete poem
32 x 24 cm (12 ⅝ x 9 ⅜ in.)
Collection Augusto de Campos

216

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 150
Décio Pignatari
Stèles pour vivre 3 (estela cubana), 1962
Concrete poem
33 x 70 cm (13 x 27 ⅝ in.)
Collection Augusto de Campos

217

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 147 CAT. 148
Décio Pignatari Haroldo de Campos
São Paulo Brasil 1960. São Paulo 1962. São Paulo
São Paulo, 1960 Edição Noigandres, 1962
Book Book
20.3 x 24.5 cm (8 x 9 ⅝ in.) 22 x 11 cm (8 ¾ x 4 ¼ in.)
Private collection Private collection

218

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 151 CAT. 152 CAT. 153
Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari Invenção. Revista de arte Invenção. Revista de
and Haroldo de Campos de vanguarda. São Paulo arte de vanguarda
Teoria da poesia concreta. Textos Edição Invenção, 1962–67 no. 3, year 2. São Paulo
críticos e manifestos 1950–1960 Magazine Edição Invenção, June
São Paulo: Edição Invenção, 25.5 x 18 cm (10 x 7 ⅛ in.) 1963
1965 152.1. No. 2, year 1, 2nd Magazine
Book trimester, 1962 25.5 x 18 cm (10 x 7 ⅛ in.)
23 x 16 cm (9 ⅛ x 6 ¼ in.) 152.2. No. 5, year 6, December Private collection
Collection José María Lafuente 1966 - January 1967
Collection José María Lafuente

219

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 154
Lygia Clark
Livro Obra, 1960
Edition K
Collage and gouache on paper
Variable dimensions
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros.
Courtesy cultural association
O Mundo de Lygia Clark

220

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 143
Lygia Clark
Creature – model, 1960
Aluminum construction
20 x 30 x 30 cm (7 ⅞ x 11 ¾ x 11 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro
Courtesy cultural association O Mundo de Lygia Clark

221

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 155
Willys de Castro
Active Object, 1959
Oil on canvas on plywood
46.5 x 92.2 cm (18 ¼ x 36 ¼ in.)
MASP - Museu de Arte de São
Paulo Assis Chateaubriand,
São Paulo (1286 P)

222

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 157 CAT. 158 CAT. 156
Willys de Castro Willys de Castro Willys de Castro
Active Object, n. d. Active Object, n. d. Active Object, 1962
Oil on canvas Oil on canvas Oil on canvas glued on wood
18 x 9 cm (7 x 3 ½ in.) 18 x 9 cm (7 x 3 ½ in.) 37.7 x 2 x 4 cm (14 ¾ x ¾ x 1 ⅝ in.)
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Pinacoteca do Estado de São [each]; 71 x 41 x 10 cm
Paulo. Gift of Hércules Rubens Paulo. Gift of Hércules Rubens (28 x 16 x 4 in.) [with acrylic box]
Barsotti, 2001 (5252) Barsotti, 2001 (5253) Pinacoteca do Estado de São
Paulo. Gift of Hércules Rubens
Barsotti, 2001 (5251)

223

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 159
Sergio Camargo
Relief no. 247, 1969
Acrylic on wood
47 x 47 x 17.5 cm (18 ½ x 18 ½ x 6 ⅞ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

224

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 160
Sergio Camargo
Relief no. 362, 1969
Acrylic on wood
50.5 x 50.5 x 2.4 cm (20 x 20 x 1 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

225

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 161
Antônio Maluf
Villa Normanda Study, 1964
Gouache on cardboard
28 x 21.5 cm (11 x 8 ½ in.)
Private collection

226

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 162
Antônio Maluf
Untitled, 1964
Gouache on paper glued on wood
30 x 30 cm (11 ¾ x 11 ¾ in.)
Private collection

227

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 163
Luiz Sacilotto
Concreção 58, 1958
Enamel on metal and acrylic on plywood
20 x 60 x 30.5 cm (8 x 23 ⅝ x 12 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

228

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 164
Luiz Sacilotto
Gouache no. 272, n. d.
Gouache on paper
48 x 64 cm (19 x 25 ¼ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

229

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 167
Hélio Oiticica
Metascheme 222, 1957
Gouache on cardboard
26 x 41.8 cm (10 ¼ x 16 ½ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

230

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 168
Hélio Oiticica
Metascheme, 1958
Gouache on cardboard
50.2 x 61.2 cm (19 ¾ x 24 ⅛ in.)
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo
Gift of Milú Villela (1998.044)

231

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 166
Hélio Oiticica
Metascheme, 1957
Gouache on cardboard
45.5 x 52.5 cm (18 x 20 ¾ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

232

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 169
Hélio Oiticica
Metascheme no. 4066, 1958
Gouache on board
58.1 x 53.3 cm (23 x 21 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the Oiticica Family, 1997 (1975.1997)

233

Fundación Juan March

234

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 170
Almir Mavignier
White/Pink Discontinuous Form, 1962
Oil on canvas
84 x 48 cm (33 x 19 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

235

Fundación Juan March

236

Fundación Juan March

Venezuela

237

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 171
Omar Carreño
Three-Time Theme no. 22, 1950
Oil on canvas
54.6 x 46 cm (21 ½ x 18 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

238

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 172
Víctor Valera
Untitled, 1951
Tempera on canvas
80 x 80 cm (31 ½ x 31 ½ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

239

Fundación Juan March

240

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 174
Jesús Rafael Soto
Rotation, 1952
Oil on plywood
100.5 x 100 x 7.5 cm (39 ⅝ x 39 ⅜ x 3 in.)
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national
d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle
Purchase, 1980 (AM 1980-529)

241

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 173
Mateo Manaure
Black is a Color, 1954
Synthetic paint on chipboard
76.5 x 51 x 4.1 cm (30 x 20 x 1 ⅝ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

242

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 175
Jesús Rafael Soto
Displacement of a Luminous Element, 1954
Vinyl dots on acrylic and tempera on panel and wood
50 x 80 x 3.3 cm (19 ¾ x 31 ½ x 1 ¼ in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

243

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 176
Jesús Rafael Soto
Black and Blue Mustache, 1962
Iron, wood and acrylic paint
73 x 153.4 x 14.7 cm (28 ¾ x 60 ⅜ x 5 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

244

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 177
Jesús Rafael Soto
Small Horizontal-Vertical, 1965
Wood, metal, Plaka and nylon
32.5 x 41.5 x 14.5 cm (12 ¾ x 16 ¼ x 5 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

245

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 178
Jesús Rafael Soto
Large Horizontal Vibration, 1966
Painted wood relief and metal rods
146 x 216 x 14 cm (57 ½ x 85 x 5 ½ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

246

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 179
Jesús Rafael Soto
Untitled, 1966
Acrylic, wood and acrylic paint
40 x 40 x 24 cm (15 ¾ x 15 ¾ x 9 ⅜ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

247

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 180
Jesús Rafael Soto
Sotomagie. Paris: Éditions
Denise René, 1967
Box containing a group of 11
optical and kinetic works
1 kinetic sculpture in methacrylate
50 x 30 x 16 cm (19 ¾ x 11 ¾ x 6 ¼ in.)
4 kinetic silkscreen sculptures on
polystyrene and methacrylate, 34 x
34 x 18 cm (13 ⅜ x 13 ⅜ x 7 in.) each
2 colored silkscreens superimposed
on cellulose acetate, 60 x 60
cm (23 ⅝ x 23 ⅝ in.) each
4 colored silkscreens, 60 x 60
cm (23 ⅝ x 23 ⅝ in.) each
Galerie Denise René, Paris

248

Fundación Juan March

 249

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 181
Alejandro Otero
Colored Lines on White Background III, 1951
Oil on canvas
65 x 54 cm (25 ⅝ x 21 ¼ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

250

Fundación Juan March

 251

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 182
Alejandro Otero
Colorhythm in Movement 2, 1957
Duco paint on wood and methacrylate
100 x 104 x 4 cm (39 ⅜ x 41 x 1 ⅝ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

252

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 183 CAT. 184
Alejandro Otero Alejandro Otero
Colorhythm 45A, 1960 Colorhythm 63, 1960
Duco paint on wood Lacquer on wood
200 x 57.5 cm (78 ¾ x 22 ⅝ in.) 150 x 38 cm (39 x 15 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro Fundación Privada Allegro

253

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 185
Narciso Debourg
In White and Black (On White), 1953
Assemblage in wood and Duco paint
100 x 100 x 7 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ x 2 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

254

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 186 CAT. 187
Narciso Debourg Narciso Debourg
White of White, 1966 White Multi-Reflections, 1970
Wood, PVC and acrylic paint Painted wood and aluminum relief
101.5 x 101.5 x 13 cm (40 x 40 x 5 in.) 91 x 91 x 9.5 cm (35 ¾ x 35 ¾ x 3 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro Galerie Denise René, Paris

255

Fundación Juan March

256

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 188
Carlos Cruz-Diez
Vibration of Black, 1957
Oil on wood
54.6 x 59.7 x 4.8 cm (21 ½ x 23 ½ x 2 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

257

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 189
Carlos Cruz-Diez
Physichromie 35, 1961
Wood and cardboard
30 x 30 cm (11 ¾ x 11 ¾ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

258

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 190
Carlos Cruz-Diez
Physichromie 94, 1963
Mixed media on wood
40 x 81 cm (15 ¾ x 32 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

259

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 191
Gego
Departing from a Rectangle II, 1958
Folded and twisted aluminum strips
32 x 36 x 37 cm (12 ⅝ x 14 ¼ x 14 ⅝ in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

260

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 192
Gego
Construction Based on Squares, 1961
Welded and enameled iron rods
40.5 x 66.5 x 48 cm (16 x 26 ¼ x 19 in.)
Fundación Privada Allegro

261

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 195
Venezuela
Invitation to the presentation of the album
at Galerie Denise René, Paris, June 22, 1956
10.5 x 13.7 cm (4 x 5 ⅜ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

262

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 193 CAT. 194
Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely
Caribbean Sea (Venezuela Album), 1956 Maracaibo (Venezuela Album), 1956
Silkscreen on paper Silkscreen on paper
66 x 51.5 cm (26 x 20 ¼ in.) 66 x 51.5 cm (26 x 20 1 in.)
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

263

Fundación Juan March

Leo Matiz
Aula Magna, Ciudad Universitaria
Caracas, 1955–56
Vintage silver-gelatin print
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz

264

Fundación Juan March

Alexander Calder Pencil, ink and color pencil
Sketches for the Aula Magna 56 x 78 cm (22 x 30 ¾ in.)
Ciudad Universitaria, Caracas, 1952
Pencil and watercolor on paper
70 x 104 cm (27 ½ x 41 in.)
58 x 72 cm (22 ¾ x 28 ¼ in.)
37 x 59 cm (14 ½ x 23 ¼ in.)
Fundación Villanueva

265

Fundación Juan March

Leo Matiz
Stained glass window by Fernand Léger
for the Central Library, Ciudad Universitaria
Caracas, 1955–56
30 x 40 cm (11 ¾ x 15 ¾ in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz

266

Fundación Juan March

Fernand Léger
Sketch for stained glass window for Central Library
Ciudad Universitaria, Caracas, 1953
Gouache on paper
45 x 91 cm (17 ¾ x 35 ¾ in.)
Fundación Villanueva

267

Fundación Juan March

268

Fundación Juan March

Colombia

269

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 196
Leo Matiz
Construction, Bogota, 1937
Silver-gelatin print
31.7 x 24.7 cm (12 ½ x 9 ¾ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

270

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 197 CAT. 198
Leo Matiz Leo Matiz
Abstract, Mexico, 1941 Mexico, 1942
Silver-gelatin print, 2010 Silver-gelatin print, 2010
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.) 25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz Fundación Leo Matiz

271

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 199 CAT. 200
Leo Matiz Leo Matiz
The Stair, New York, 1949 Abstracts, 1950
Vintage silver-gelatin print Vintage silver-gelatin print
21.5 x 19.3 cm (8 ½ x 7 ½ in.) 17.1 x 24.1 cm (6 ¾ x 9 ½ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

272

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 201
Leo Matiz
Abstract, USA, 1950
Vintage silver-gelatin print
16.5 x 24.4 cm (6 ½ x 9 ½ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

273

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 202
Leo Matiz
Polygon, Venezuela, 1950
Silver-gelatin print
40 x 30 cm (15 ¾ x 11 ¾ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

274

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 203
Leo Matiz
Abstract, Caracas, 1950
Silver-gelatin print, 2010
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz

275

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 206 CAT. 204
Leo Matiz Leo Matiz
Light and Shadow, Argentina, 1965 Venezuela, 1951
Silver-gelatin print, 2010 Vintage silver-gelatin print
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.) 25.4 x 19.9 cm (10 x 7 ¾ in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz Fundación Leo Matiz

276

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 205
Leo Matiz
Venezuela, 1952
Silver-gelatin print, 2010
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz

277

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 207 CAT. 208
Leo Matiz Leo Matiz
Museo Jesús Soto, Venezuela, 1973 Museo Jesús Soto, Venezuela, 1973
Silver-gelatin print, 2010 Silver-gelatin print, 2010
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.) 25.3 x 20.3 cm
Fundación Leo Matiz Fundación Leo Matiz

278

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 209 CAT. 210
Leo Matiz Leo Matiz
Museo Jesús Soto, Venezuela, 1973 Museo Jesús Soto, Venezuela, 1973
Silver-gelatin print, 2010 Silver-gelatin print, 2010
25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.) 25.3 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)
Fundación Leo Matiz Fundación Leo Matiz

279

Fundación Juan March

280

Fundación Juan March

 Cuba

281

Fundación Juan March

Sandu Darie with his wife Lily in front of his
Spatial Multivision, Havana, n. d.
Archivo del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana

282

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 211
Sandu Darie
Spatial Multivision, 1950s
Oil on canvas and wood rods
126 x 126 cm (49 ½ x 49 ½ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (90.3304)

283

Fundación Juan March

Sandu Darie next to his
Transformable Painting
in his home in Havana, late
1950s
Archivo del Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes,
Havana

284

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 215
Sandu Darie
Transformable Painting, 1957
Oil on canvas and wood rods
133.5 x 134 cm (52 ½ x 52 ¾ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (07.425)

285

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 213 CAT. 212
Sandu Darie Sandu Darie
Pictorial Construction, ca. 1950 Untitled, 1950s
Stretcher and painted wood rods Oil on canvas
80 x 42.5 x 6 cm 53.5 x 55 cm (21 x 21 ¾ in.)
(31 ½ x 16 ¾ x 2 ⅜ in.) Museo Nacional de
Museo Nacional de Bellas Bellas Artes, Havana (90.3305)
Artes, Havana (89.1353)

286

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 214
Sandu Darie
Spatial Multivision, 1955
Oil on canvas
136 x 102 cm (53 ½ x 40 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes, Havana (07.432)

287

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 216
Mario Carreño
Unexpected Encounter, 1952
Oil on canvas
130 x 200 cm (51 ¼ x 78 ¾ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (07.410)

288

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 217
Mario Carreño
Untitled, 1954
Oil on canvas
91 x 76.5 cm
Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes, Havana (2393)

289

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 218
Rafael Soriano
Composition, n. d.
Oil on canvas
56 x 97 cm (22 x 38 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (03.30)

290

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 219
Rafael Soriano
Untitled, n. d.
Oil on canvas
56 x 97 cm (22 x 38 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (03.28)

291

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 220
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ron Bacardi y Compañía S.A. Administration Building
project, Santiago de Cuba. Interior perspective, ca. 1957
Colored paper, wood veneer, ink and
photo collage on illustration board
76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mies van der
Rohe Archive. Gift of the architect (MR5701.454)

292

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 221
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Bacardi Office Building project, Santiago de Cuba.
Preliminary version: interior perspective, 1957
Ink, wood veneer, marbleized paper and
cut-out reproduction on illustration board
76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mies van der
Rohe Archive. Gift of the architect, 1966 (999.1965)

293

Fundación Juan March

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ron Bacardí y Compañía S.A. Office Building project Ron Bacardí y Compañía S.A. Office Building project
Santiago de Cuba, view of the model, 1957–60 Santiago de Cuba, situation plan, 1957–58
Silver-gelatin print Silver-gelatin print
20.6 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.) 72.6 x 101.6 cm (28 ½ x 40 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mies van der Rohe Archive Mies van der Rohe Archive
Gift of the architect (MMA 17200) Gift of the architect (MR5701.443)

294

Fundación Juan March

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ron Bacardí y Compañía S.A. Office Building project Ron Bacardí y Compañía S.A. Office Building project
Santiago de Cuba, exterior elevation and plan, 1957 Santiago de Cuba, exterior elevation, cross section and plan, 1957
Pencil on paper with the Hotel Nacional de Cuba Pencil on paper with the Hotel Nacional de Cuba
Letterhead, Havana Letterhead, Havana
18.4 x 27.3 cm (7 ¼ x 10 ¾ in.) 18.4 x 27.3 cm (7 ¼ x 10 ¾ in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mies van der Rohe Archive Mies van der Rohe Archive
Gift of the architect (MR5701.174) Gift of the architect (MR5701.175

295

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 222
Loló Soldevilla
Composition, 1950s
Oil on canvas
75 x 75 cm (29 ½ x 29 ½ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (08.1969)

296

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 223
Loló Soldevilla
Celestial Chart in Yellow no. 1, Paris, 1953
Oil on canvas
73 x 92 cm (28 ¾ x 36 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (07.415)

297

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 224
Loló Soldevilla
Untitled, 1955
Collage on paper
50.6 x 65 cm (20 x 25 ½ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (1057)

298

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 225 CAT. 226
Loló Soldevilla Loló Soldevilla
Untitled, 1956 Untitled, 1956
Oil on cardboard Oil on cardboard
27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.) 27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

CAT. 227
Loló Soldevilla
Untitled, 1956
Oil on cardboard
27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

299

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 228
Loló Soldevilla
Untitled, ca. 1956
Mixed media on card
30 x 24.7 cm (11 ¾ x 9 ¾ in.)
Private collection

300

Fundación Juan March

Loló Soldevilla
Untitled, 1955
Collage on card
25.1 x 32.8 cm (10 x 13 in.)
Collection Jorge Virgili, Madrid

301

Fundación Juan March

Loló Soldevilla next to her
Diagonal Silence
(later titled Homage to Fidel), ca.
1957
Archivo Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes, Havana

302

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 229
Loló Soldevilla
Homage to Fidel, 1957
Assemblage in wood and vinyl paint
145 x 152.5 cm (57 x 60 in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (08.2121)

303

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 230
José Mijares
Stability, 1959
Acrylic on canvas
210 x 61.5 cm
(82 ¾ x 24 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes, Havana (08.1050)

304

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 231
José Mijares
Composition no. 2, 1960
Oil on canvas
104 x 83 cm (41 x 32 ¾ in.)
Collection Raquel Villa, Havana

305

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 232
José Mijares
Painting, 1961
Oil on canvas
99.5 x 129.5 cm (39 ¼ x 51 in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (08.1072)

306

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 233 CAT. 234
José Mijares José Mijares
Forms, 1965 Composition, 1965
Collage on paper Collage on paper
53 x 75.5 cm (21 x 29 ¾ in.) 93.5 x 68.5 cm (36 ¾ x 27 in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (76.2027) Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (68.457)

307

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 235
Luis Martínez Pedro
Composition no. 6, 1954
Oil on canvas
203 x 126.5 cm (80 x 49 ¾ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes, Havana (08.1173)

308

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 236
Luis Martínez Pedro
Composition no. 12, 1956
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
Collection Rafael DiazCasas

309

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 237
Luis Martínez Pedro
Homage, 1959
Oil on canvas
196 x 87 cm (77 ¼ x 34 ¼ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (07.413)

310

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 238
Luis Martínez Pedro
Territorial Waters
no. 5, 1962
Oil on canvas
186.5 x 148.5 cm
(73 ⅜ x 58 ½ in.)
Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes, Havana (07.414)

311

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 239 CAT. 240
Salvador Corratgé Salvador Corratgé
Untitled, late 1950s New Formal Planar Unity Opened
Gouache on paper in 3 Distinct Phases onto a
60 x 46 cm (23 ⅝ x 18 in.) Supporting Point, 1961
Collection Raquel Villa, Havana Oil on canvas
124 x 153 cm (48 ¾ x 60 ¼ in.)
Private collection, Havana

312

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 313

Fundación Juan March

314

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CAT. 241
Carmen Herrera
Untitled (Black and White), 1950
Acrylic on canvas
123.5 x 123.5 x 4.1 cm (48 ⅝ x 48 ⅝ x 1 ⅝ in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

CAT. 242
Carmen Herrera
Untitled, 1952
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
63.5 x 152.4 cm (25 x 60 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Gift of Agnes Gund and Tony
Bechara, 2005 (972.2005)

315

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 244
Carmen Herrera
White and Green, 1966–67
Acrylic on canvas
114.3 x 101.6 cm (45 x 40 in.)
Collection Ella Fontanals-Cisneros

316

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 243
Carmen Herrera
White and Green, 1959
Acrylic on canvas
114.9 x 152.9 cm (45 ¼ x 60 ¼ in.)
Tate, London. Lent by the
American Fund for the Tate
Gallery, courtesy of Ella Fontanals
Cisneros 2006 (L02658)

317

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 245
Noticias de Arte, 1952–53
Magazine
31 x 24 cm (12 ¼ x 9 ⅜ in.)
245.1. Year 1, no. 1, September 1952
245.2. Year 1, no. 8, April 1953
245.3. Year 1, no. 9, May 1953
Fundación Juan March, Madrid

318

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 247 CAT. 246 CAT. 248
Juan Marinello Pintura de hoy, Vanguardia de la Escuela Loló Soldevilla
Conversación con nuestros pintores de Paris. Havana: Instituto Nacional de Ir, venir, volver a ir. Crónicas (1952–1957.)
abstractos. Mensajes. Cuadernos Cultura, Palacio de Bellas Artes, 1956 Havana: Ediciones [R]evolución, 1963
marxistas. Offprint, Havana, 1958 Exhibition program Book
Book 31 x 24 cm (12 ¼ x 9 ⅜ in.) 20.5 x 13.5 cm (8 x 5 ¼ in.)
21.5 x 16.5 cm (8 ½ x 6 ½ in.) Private collection Fundación Juan March, Madrid
Fundación Juan March, Madrid

319

Fundación Juan March

320

Fundación Juan March

 Europe

321

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 249
Cercle et carré, Paris, 1930
Magazine
32 x 24 cm (12 ⅝ x 9 ⅜ in.)
249.1. No. 1, March 15, 1930
249.2. No. 2, April 15, 1930
249.3. No. 3, June 30, 1930
Collection José María Lafuente

322

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 250
Abstraction création. Art non figuratif, Paris, 1932–33
Magazine
28 x 22.5 cm (11 x 9 in.)
250.1. No. 1, 1932
250.2. No. 2, 1933
Collection José María Lafuente

323

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 251
Joaquín Torres-García
Handwritten letter inviting Benjamín Palencia to
participate in the constructivist group, 1933
22.4 x 16.5 cm (8 ¾ x 6 ½ in.)
Courtesy Freijo Fine Art, Galería de arte y proyectos

324

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 252
Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, 1947–49
Magazine
28 x 23 cm (11 x 9 ⅛ in.)
252.1. No. 1, 1947
252.2. No. 2, 1948
252.3. No. 3, 1949
Collection José María Lafuente

325

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 253 CAT. 254 CAT. 255
Arte concreta, Milan, 1951–52 Numero, Florence, November- Eugen Gomringer, konstellationen,
Bulletin December 1953 constellations, constelaciones
16.5 x 17 cm (6 ½ x 6 ¾ in.) Magazine Bern: Spiral Press, 1953
253.1. No. 1, November 1951 Two poems by Gyula Kosice and one Book
253.2. No. 5, March 1952 by Juan Bay published on page 21 25 x 25 cm (9 ¾ x 9 ¾ in.)
Collection José María Lafuente 34 x 24 cm (13 ⅜ x 9 ⅜ in.) Collection José María Lafuente
Collection José María Lafuente

326

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 256 CAT. 257
Diagonale. Galerie Denise Art d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1953–54
René, Paris, 1952 Magazine
Exhibition opening invitation 31 x 24 cm (12 ¼ x 9 ⅜ in.)
November 14, 1952 257.1. Series 4, no. 8, December 1953
13.9 x 10.7 cm (5 ½ x 4 ¼ in.) Includes Edgard Pillet interview with Mário Pedrosa
Galerie Denise René, Paris 257.2. Series 5, no. 6, September 1954
Cover based on a gouache by Cicero Dias
Includes homage to Carlos Raúl Villanueva’s
Ciudad Universitaria, Caracas
Collection José María Lafuente

327

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 258 CAT. 261
Art madi international Opening of exhibition
Galerie Denise René, Paris, 1958 Art madí international
Exhibition opening invitation at Galerie Denise René
February 18, 1958 Paris, February 18, 1958
9.7 x 21.2 cm (3 ¾ x 8 ¼ in.) Photos
Galerie Denise René, Paris 24 x 18 cm (9 ⅜ x 7 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris
CAT. 259
Art madi international.
Galerie Denise René, Paris, 1958
Exhibition program
16 x 20.4 cm (6 ½ x 8 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

328

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 262
Kosice. Galerie Denise
René, Paris, April 5–30, 1960
Exhibition catalogue
24 x 20 cm (9 ⅜ x 8 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

329

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 263
Signals, London, 1964–65
Magazine
51 x 34 cm (20 x 13 ⅜ in.)
263.1. Vol. 1, no. 1, August 1964
263.2. Vol. 1, no. 5, December 1964 - January 1965
Issue dedicated to Sergio Camargo
263.3. Vol. 1, no. 7, April - May 1965
Issue dedicated to Lygia Clark
Collection José María Lafuente

330

Fundación Juan March

 331

Fundación Juan March

 CAT. 264
Robho, Paris, 1967–68
Magazine
41 x 28,5 cm (16 x 11 ¼ in.)
264.1. No. 1, June 1967
264.2. No. 3, spring 1968
Collection José María Lafuente

332

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 265 CAT. 266
Abstraction géometrique, Lumière et mouvement, Art optique et cinétique Cruz-Diez. Physichromies. Couleur additive. Induction
The Redfern Gallery, London, 1968 Chromatique. Chromointerférences
Exhibition catalogue Galerie Denise René, New York, November 1971
30.5 x 24.2 cm (12 x 9 ½ in.) Exhibition catalogue
Galerie Denise René, Paris 26 x 21 cm (10 ¼ x 8 ¼ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

333

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 267
Carlos Cruz-Diez and Francisco Sobrino exhibition
Two Optical Artists of the 70s
Galerie Denise René, New York
November 17 - December 4, 1971
Installation photos
20.5 x 25.3 cm (8 x 10 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

334

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 268 CAT. 269
Cruz-Diez. Galerie Denise René Narciso Debourg. Galerie
Paris, May 23 - June 11, 1973 Denise René Hans Mayer
Exhibition catalogue Düsseldorf, 1972
26 x 21 cm (10 ¼ x 8 ¼ in.) Exhibition opening invitation
Galerie Denise René, Paris March 17, 1972
21 x 10.5 cm (8 ¼ x 4 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

335

Fundación Juan March

Poster for the exhibition of the Argentine Poster for the exhibition 12 leading modern
group Madí at the Galerie Denise René artists at the Galerie Denise René, Hans Mayer
Paris, February 18–28, 1958 Düsseldorf, July-September 1968

336

Fundación Juan March

Poster for the Carlos Cruz-Diez exhibition Poster for the Jesús Rafael Soto exhibition
at the Galerie Denise René, New York at the Galerie Denise René, Paris
November 1971 July 1970

337

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 270 CAT. 271 CAT. 272
16 artistes, peinture et sculpture Tomasello. Originale + Tomasello. Galerie Denise
Galerie Denise René, Paris, June 1972 Multiples. Galerie Denise René, Paris, 1972
Invitation René Hans Mayer, Exhibition opening
20 x 10.5 cm (8 x 4 in.) Düsseldorf, April 16, 1971 invitation, May 3, 1972
Galerie Denise René, Paris Exhibition opening invitation 20 x 10.5 cm (8 x 4 in.)
21 x 10.5 cm (8 ¼ x 4 in.) Galerie Denise René, Paris
Galerie Denise René, Paris

338

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 273
Tomasello: oeuvres récentes
Galerie Denise René, Paris, 1972
Exhibition catalogue
26 x 21 cm (10 ¼ x 8 ¼ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

339

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CAT. 274
Luis Tomasello exhibition at Galerie
Denise René, Paris, 1972
Installation photos
18.3 x 24 cm (7 ¼ x 9 ⅜ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

340

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CAT. 275
Tomasello: Recent Works.
Galerie Denise René, New York, May 1973
Exhibition catalogue
26 x 21 cm (10 ¼ x 8 ¼ in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

341

Fundación Juan March

Poster for the Luis Tomasello exibition
at Galerie Denise René
New York, May 1973

342

Fundación Juan March

CAT. 276
Luis Tomasello
Chromoplastic Atmosphere no. 352, 1974
Painted wood relief
100 x 100 x 10 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ x 3 7/8 in.)
Galerie Denise René, Paris

343

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344

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chronology

N. del Ed.: Aunque el lapso temporal de la exposición lo marcan dos retornos de artistas a
Latinoamérica (1934 y 1973), estos apuntes cronológicos se remontan a 1930, para hacer
constar algunos hechos relevantes para entender las cuatro décadas posteriores. En cada año,
la cita de los eventos sigue, naturalmente, el orden cronológico. Los artistas en exposición
aparecen en negrita y con sus datos biográficos entre paréntesis. El lector encontrará al final
de la sección un escueto glosario con el que podrá situarse en el cúmulo de referencias a
personajes históricos, algunos de los cuales resultan poco conocidos incluso para un lector culto
pero no especialista. Se ha preferido incluir también las referencias más obvias a personajes
conocidos (Kandinsky, Mondrian, etc.).

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 1930 + Joaquín Torres-García and Michael Seuphor
form the Cercle et Carré group in Paris and
publish a periodical of the same name, the
first issue of which is released on March 15,
1930.
+ In April, Torres-García organizes an exhibition
with Latin American artists Diego Rivera,
Germán Cueto, and Juan del Prete, among
others, at the Galerie Zak in Paris.

1931 + In February, Georges Vantongerloo and

Auguste Herbin co-found the Abstraction-
Création movement in Paris. The group
organizes an annual exhibition up until 1936.

1932 + The first of five Abstraction-Création: Art non

figuratif yearbooks is published.
+ Germán Cueto leaves Paris, where he had
resided since 1927, and returns to Mexico.

Notes for a Chronology 1933 + Joaquín Torres-García sets up the Grupo de

Arte Constructivo in Madrid.

of Geometric Abstraction in + On April 11, the Bauhaus is closed on Hitler’s

orders [fig. 1].

Latin America (1930–1973) + In the fall, Josef Albers joins the newly
founded Black Mountain College in North
Carolina.
OSBEL SUÁREZ
1934 + Cuban designer Clara Porset, a former
student at Black Mountain College, invites
Josef Albers to deliver a series of lectures at
the Lyceum in Havana. His three-week stay
in Cuba was the first of many trips to Latin
America.
+ On April 14, after living in Europe for over four
decades, Joaquín Torres-García and his family
embark at Cadiz for Montevideo, where they
arrive 16 days later.
+ On June 5, a retrospective exhibition
featuring over 200 works executed by Joaquín
Torres-García between 1989 and 1934 opens
at the Amigos del Arte center in Montevideo
[CAT. 11].
+ In August, Joaquín Torres-García publishes
his Manifiesto 1 [cat. 12] in response to an
article by Norberto Berdía in which the artist

While the exhibition spans a period marked by the

return of two artists to Latin America (1934 and 1973),
the present chronological notes go back to 1930,
covering events that are crucial for an understanding
of what was to come in the next forty years. Relevant
events are listed in chronological order below their
corresponding year. In order to guide the reader
through the numerous references to artists and
historical figures, and taking into account several
names may only be known to a specialized audience,
a brief glossary is included at the end of the section,
along with a biographical note that places the cited
individuals in chronological context.

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 was accused of “theorizing” and “taking + Following a brief stay in Paris, Martin Blaszko + In November, Tomás Maldonado, Alfredo
refuge in abstract forms to escape reality.” takes up residence in Buenos Aires. Hlito, Lidy Prati, Rafael Lozza, Manuel
On the last page of the publication, Torres- Espinosa, Edgar Bayley, Antonio Caraduje,
García warned further manifestos would be 1941 + Rumanian-born artist Sandu Darie leaves Raúl Lozza, Alberto Molenberg, Óscar Núñez,
published periodically, for “heartfelt words France for Havana and settles permanently in and Jorge Souza, among others, form the
are needed on all topics and episodes that Cuba. Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) in
concern art.” Two more manifestos were Buenos Aires.
released, the second in December 1938 and 1942 + The Manifiesto de los Cuatro Jóvenes, signed
the third in January 1940 [CAT. 15, 20]. by Jorge Brito, Tomás Maldonado, Claudio 1946 + Josef and Anni Albers make their sixth trip
Girola, and Alfredo Hlito, is published in to Mexico. Josef Albers begins a new series
1935 + Josef and Anni Albers make the first of Buenos Aires of paintings entitled Variantes (Variants) or
fourteen trips to Latin America. Adobe, a clear reference to adobe geometric
+ Torres-García establishes the Asociación de 1943 + Gyula Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin, and architecture in Mexico.
Arte Constructivo (AAC) in Montevideo. Rhod Rothfuss visit Torres-García’s studio in + The Salon des Réalités Nouvelles is founded
Montevideo. in Paris by Fredo Sidès serving as president,
1936 + In May, Joaquín Torres-García launches the + The last issue of Círculo y Cuadrado is Auguste Herbin as vice-president, and A. F.
quarterly magazine Círculo y Cuadrado, which printed. del Marle as secretary general. The group is
stems from the periodical created in Paris in intended to replace the Abstraction-Création
1930. 1944 + Buenos Aires publisher Poseidón releases association. Initial committee members
+ The Alberses make their second trip to Universalismo constructivo (Constructive included Jean Arp, Gilbert Besançon, Sonia
Mexico. In August, an exhibition of Josef Universalism), a collection of 150 lectures Delaunay, Jean Dewasne, Albert Gleizes,
Albers’s gouache paintings and graphic work delivered by Joaquín Torres-García since his Jean Gorin, and Antoine Pevsner. Latin
opens at the head offices of the daily El return to Uruguay from 1934 to 1943. American artists were strongly represented at
Nacional. + On February 1, Piet Mondrian dies of later editions of the salon.
pneumonia in New York. + The first Exposición Arte Madí takes place at
1937 + The architects Carlos Raúl Villanueva and Luis + On 18 March, Max Bill opens the first the Instituto Francés de Estudios Superiores
Malaussena design the Venezuelan Pavilion international exhibition of concrete art at the / Galería Van Riel in Buenos Aires. The
for the Paris World Fair, a project that earns Kunsthalle in Basel. exhibition includes works by Gyula Kosice,
them a special mention. + In the austral summer, the first and only issue Martín Blaszko, Carmelo Arden Quin, Rod
of the magazine Arturo. Revista de Artes Rothfuss, Diyi Laañ, Valdo Longo, and
1938 + Uruguayan artist Carmelo Arden Quin settles Abstractas is published; it includes an article Elizabeth (Lisl) Steiner, among others.
in Buenos Aires. by Rhod Rothfuss entitled “El marco: un + In the spring, Lucio Fontana launches the first
1939 + Gertrude Goldschmidt (Gego) leaves Germany problema de la plástica actual” (The Frame: A spatialist declaration, Manifiesto Blanco.
for Venezuela. Problem in Contemporary Art) that questions + The Manifiesto Invencionista is published
conventional notions of the frame. in the first issue of Arte Concreto-Invención
+ On December 13, Wassily Kandinsky dies in magazine, printed in August.
his studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine, then a town on + On November 24, László Moholy-Nagy dies at
the outskirts of Paris. the age of 51 from leukemia in Chicago.

1945 + Alejandro Otero receives a fellowship from 1947 + The Manifiesto Invencionista is published
the French government to study in Paris. The along with an article by Carlos Drummond de
grant is later extended by the Ministry of Andrade in the newspaper Correio da Manhã
Education of Venezuela. in Brazil.

FIG. 1. Iwao Yamawaki, Der

Schlag gegen das Bauhaus
(Attack on the Bauhaus), 1932.
Photo collage, 26 x 19 cm (10
⅛ x 7 ⅜ in.). Bauhaus-Archiv,
Berlin. Originally published
in the magazine Kokusai-
Kenchiku, vol. 8, 12 (Tokyo,
December 1932): 272

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Fundación Juan March

 + Raúl Lozza leaves the Asociación Arte Paul Sartre and Henrique Mindlin, among Del arte figurativo al arte abstracto. El arte
Concreto-Invención and founds Perceptismo. others [fig. 3]. abstracto en Francia, curated by Léon Degand,
+ After having lived ten years in Palestine, opens in Buenos Aires. Presented previously
Abraham Palatnik returns to Brazil and settles 1949 + Alejandro Otero leaves Paris for Venezuela at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo
permanently in Rio de Janeiro. the same year Mercedes Pardo, Narciso (MAM-SP), the exhibition showcases works
+ The first issue of Arte Madí Universal is Debourg, and Armando Barrios embark on by Alexander Calder, Victor Vasarely, Francis
published. a trip to France. On his return to Venezuela, Picabia, Fernand Léger, Wassily Kandinsky,
+ The Madí movement disbands; Gyula Kosice Otero causes a stir with his cafeteras (coffee and other European artists.
joins sides with Rhod Rothfuss, while pots), exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes + The Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención
Carmelo Arden Quin moves to Paris following de Caracas. disbands.
the split and concentrates his efforts on + Josef Albers begins the seminal series + On August 8, Joaquín Torres-García dies at
internationalizing Madí art. Homenaje al cuadrado (Homage to the the age of 75 in Montevideo.
+ The first issue of the annual magazine Square). + The Manifesto Perceptista is published in the
Réalités Nouvelles is published. + Sandu Darie and Gyula Kosice exchange catalogue of the first exhibition of perceptist
correspondence [fig. 4], and continue doing art held at the Galería Van Riel in Buenos
1948 + During a two-month tour of Europe, Tomás so regularly until 1958. Aires on October 31.
Maldonado comes into contact with Bruno + Hungarian-born photographer Thomaz Farkas
Munari, Max Bill, Gillo Dorfles, and Georges acquires Brazilian citizenship. The exhibition 1950 + Alejandro Otero returns to Paris and creates
Vantongerloo. Los Disidentes magazine together with
+ An exhibition of the Argentine Asociación Arte FIG. 2. Lúcio Costa and team, Mateo Manaure, Pascual Navarro, Carlos
Concreto-Invención opens at the Taller Libre Ministry of Education and González Bogen, Narciso Debourg, Rubén
Public Health, view of the
de Arte in Caracas. Núñez, Perán Erminy, Dora Hersen, J. R.
north façade, Rio de Janeiro,
+ Clara Porset, who had settled in Mexico, 1937–45. Photo: Marcel Guillent Pérez, and Aimée Battistini. The
is invited to teach architecture and interior Gautherot, ca. 1950, 48 x 36 publication gives rise to the group Los
design at the Universidad de la Habana in cm (18 ¾ x 14 in.). Instituto Disidentes, proponents of abstract art.
Cuba. Moreira Salles + In April, Carlos Raúl Villanueva attends
+ Awarded a fellowship by the French the Panamerican Congress of Architects
government, Juan Melé travels to France organized in Havana.
and tours Italy, where he comes into contact + Jesús Rafael Soto is awarded a grant by the
with members of the MAC, the Concrete art Venezuelan government and on September
movement of Milan. 16 he travels to Paris, where he settles
+ The second issue of Réalités Nouvelles permanently.
magazine includes reproductions of works + Perceptismo magazine is first launched in
by, among others, Manuel Espinosa, Gyula Buenos Aires in October. The seventh and last
Kosice, Alberto Molenberg, Juan Melé, Rhod issue is published in July 1953.
Rothfuss, Tomás Maldonado, Lidy Prati, and + From October 9–20, an exhibition of Sandu
Juan del Prete, which led to the first major Darie’s work entitled Estructuras pictóricas is
display of Argentine and Uruguayan art at displayed at the Havana Lyceum [fig. 5, 6].
the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, held at the
Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 1951 + Spanish architect Josep Lluís Sert visits
+ In September, Alexander Calder’s work is the construction site of the UCV University
exhibited at the Museu de Arte Moderna Campus in Caracas. Through Sert, Villanueva
do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ) [fig. 2]. The meets Alexander Calder at the former’s home
exhibition catalogue includes texts by Jean- in Roxbury (Connecticut).

FIG. 3. Cover of the exhibition

catalogue Alexander Calder
at the Museu de Arte
Moderna do Rio de Janeiro
(Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da
Educação e Saúde, September
1948)

348

Fundación Juan March

 FIG. 6. Sandu Darie at
his exhibition Estructuras
pictóricas, Lyceum, Havana,
1950

FIG. 7. Geraldo de