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Argentina: Arte Concreto-Invencion, 1945, Grupo Madi, 1946
Press Release, 1990
On November 17 the Rachel Adler Gallery will present an exhibition of over thirty rare woks by the members of Arte Concreto-Invencion and MADI, two avantgarde movements founded in 1945 and 1946 in Argentina. The exhibition will continue through December 29, 1990. Among the artists represented are Carmelo Arden Quin, Juan Bay, Alfredo Hlito, Enio Iommi, Raul Lozza and Gregorio Vardanega.
The formation of these two movements by a group of young artists represented the first organized commitment to the avant-garde in Argentina. The return of prominent Latin American artists from Europe, among them Torres-Garcia, one of the founding members of Cercle et Carre, served as an impetus for the Argentinians who like their counterparts in Europe were declaring their allegiance to abstract art, against the resurgence of figurative art as represented by Surrealism.
Arte Concreto-Invencion founded in 1945, held its inaugural exhibition in 1946. The term "concrete" developed from the artist's desire to differentiate themselves from the associations they believed to be implicit in the term abstract, which they felt emphasized a manner of extracting and reinterpreting reality rather than achieving a new reality. Their aims were partially achieved through the exploration of the frame and its relationship to the composition, culminating in the invention of the first shaped and transformable paintings.
MADI, founded in 1946, and composed of many of the same members from Arte Concreto-Invencion further expanded these ideas. As Dawn Ades has written in Art in Latin America the MADI "…began to emphasize the movement and articulation of its constructions dropping…the term 'concrete' and explored numerous ways of undermining or subverting the conventional, static easel painting or sculpture... They shared a redical rejection of past art, the refusal of representation and the abandonment of the figure, the search for new forms and experiments with new materials the blurring of traditional distinctions between painting and sculpture... With complete freedom, the MADI artists used a broad spectrum of avant-garde European art-Dada, Russian Constructivism…as a springboard for invention." These experiments led to many innovations including the creation of shaped pierced canvases and the first neon and kinetic sculptures.
The MADI group exhibited at the Salon des Realites Nouvelles and both movements were included in other important exhibitions in Paris. The works in this show are being exhibited for the first time in the United States and include rare documents and publications from the period. A major exhibition of these two movements will be held at the Zurich Kunsthaus in the spring of 1991.
This exhibition affords the viewer an opportunity to view a selection of works from two very distinctive and important movements in art whose ideas and inventions were to have an impact on the European and American Geometric abstract art of the sixties. With this exhibitions the gallery continues to explore the developments and influences of European abstraction both throughout and outside of Europe.
Carmelo Arden Quin |
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Argentina: Arte Concreto
Invencion, 1945,
Grupo Madi, 1946
Essay by Mario Gradowczyk (1990)
Cover |
