Van Doesburg argued that there was nothing more real than a line, color, or plane. In the years after World War II, artists in Argentina and Brazil, such as Willys de Castro, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Judith Lauand, Raúl Lozza, Tomás Maldonado, Hélio Oiticica, and Rhod Rothfuss, experimented with geometric abstraction and engaged in lively debates about the role of art in society.
The multiyear international research project Concrete Art in Argentina and Brazil was launched with the goal of studying materiality and reconsidering preestablished narratives surrounding Concrete art, a new approach which would allow researchers and art historians to see its histories from a new perspective. The overall aim of the project was to reexamine concrete art in the light of new information about its materiality and to collectively develop a comprehensive understanding of the materials, techniques, and processes employed by concrete artists.
Purity Is a Myth: The Materiality of Concrete Art From Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (Getty Research Institute/Getty Conservation Institute) draws on this research and presents essays on the South American concrete art movement of the 1940s to the 1960s. The volume contains essays which address a variety of topics, including the general history, emergence, and reception of Concrete art, processes and color, scientific analysis of works, illustrated chronologies of the paint industry in Brazil and Argentina, and Concrete design on paper. As the first comprehensive technical study of the Concrete art movement in Latin America, this volume will prove to be an indispensable resource for scholars and students of Latin American art.
Contents
Introduction
“The Myth of Purity: New Material Histories of Concrete Art in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay”
Zanna Gilbert, Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Andrew Perchuk
Part I. New Perspectives on the Emergence of Concrete Art from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay
“Material Relations: Torres-García and Concrete Art from Argentina”
Niko Vicario
“Rhod Rothfuss and the marco recortado: A Synthesis of Cultural Traditions in the Río de la Plata Region”
María Amalia García
“Waldemar Cordeiro and Grupo Forma: The Roman Road to São Paulo Concrete Art”
Heloisa Espada
Part II. Generative Processes in Concrete Art
“Cut, Fuse, Fissure: Planarity circa 1954”
Irene V. Small
“Judith Lauand’s Sketchbooks and the Visualization of Concrete Form in 1954”
Aliza Edelman
“Hermelindo Fiaminghi’s Quadrature of the Circle between 1954 and 1959: From Concrete Enamel to Giotto’s Tempera”
Pia Gottschaller, Tom Learner, and Joy Mazurek
Part III. Concretizing Color
“Energy, Legibility, Purity: Color in Argentine Concrete Art”
Idurre Alonso, Pia Gottschaller, C. C. Marsh, Andrew Perchuk, and Lynn Lee
“Looking to the Past to Paint the Future: Innovative Anachronisms in the Work of Alfredo Volpi and Hélio Oiticica”
Mari Carmen Ramírez and Corina E. Rogge
“The Adventure of Color in Brazilian Art: Aluísio Carvão, Hélio Oiticica, and Roberto Burle Marx”
Luiz Camillo Osorio
Part IV. Concrete Art on Paper
“Printing Invention: Artwork, Project, or Device”
Isabel Plante
“On Kissing and Biting: Materiality, Language, and Design in the Work of Hermelindo Fiaminghi and Willys de Castro”
Zanna Gilbert
Part V. Analyzing Concrete Art: Technical Overviews
“Experimentation and Materiality: Constructing the Brazilian Artwork, 1950s–60s”
Luiz A. C. Souza, Alessandra Rosado, Yacy-Ara Froner, Rita L. Rodrigues, Maria Alice Sanna Castello Branco, Giulia Giovani, and Vítor P. Amaral
“Argentine Concrete Art, the First Decade: Between Material and Formal Tradition and Innovation”
Pino Monkes
“Technical Studies of Concrete Art from the Río de la Plata Region”
Fernando Marte
Part VI. The Reception of Concrete Art in Museums and Academia
“A History of the Field”
Aleca Le Blanc
Part VII. Chronologies
“The Argentine Paint Industry: 1940–60”
Sofía Frigerio and Florencia Castellá
“Paint Production in Brazil, 1940s–60s”
João Henrique Ribeiro Barbosa
