SÃO PAULO — Geometric abstraction occupies such a outstanding place within the historical past of Brazilian fashionable and up to date artwork that I used to be stunned to listen to that the São Paulo Museum of Artwork (MASP) initially collected figuration extra closely. Now, nevertheless, MASP has not solely opened a brand new annex as of March, it’s additionally actively filling gaps in its holdings of summary artwork and exhibiting them to the general public.
Geometries, one in every of 5 Essays on MASP, a collection of exhibitions drawn from the museum’s everlasting assortment to inaugurate the opening of its new constructing, is however a sampling. However this elegantly hung exhibition, spanning the Fifties to the current, highlights the vigor of geometric artwork in Latin America and, to some extent, america, notably Brazil’s Constructivist, Concrete, Neo-Concrete, and up to date artwork actions.
The intimate nature of the present — 62 items occupy a single flooring — brings out the interconnectedness of those actions. In 1959, Brazilian artists together with Ferreira Gullar, Lygia Clark, Amilcar de Castro, and Franz Weissmann signed the Neo-Concrete Manifesto, hailing Kazimir Malevich’s “pure sensibility of art” and calling for a break from rationality in favor of expressivity and phenomenology. In actuality, the transition from Concrete Artwork, which emphasizes geometrical abstraction, was extra fluid. De Castro, as an illustration, confirmed in each the 1959 Neo-Concrete exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and the 1960 Concrete exhibition in Zurich. And whereas one can definitely sense the rationality of the geometric synthesis of de Castro’s works in metal, reminiscent of “Untitled” (1996), his approach of reducing and folding kinds, making the fabric seem pliable, practically respiration, is undeniably expressive. Empty areas create lightness and rhythm, suggesting a temporal unfolding.
Delson Uchôa, “Wiring” (2009), electrical wires over aluminum
The works of different artists on view equally stroll the road between the Concrete and Neo-Concrete actions. Weissmann’s “Three Articulated Blades” (Nineteen Eighties), two red-painted L-shapes laid on their sides, creates a way of geometry gone astray. And Clark’s steel Critters (1960–64), one in every of which can also be featured, convey an analogous tactile sensibility.
Concrete and Neo-Concrete artwork additionally impacted different actions and media. As an illustration, they influenced the quickly growing Brazilian fashionable images, with artists taking to the streets to seize the prosaic, city geometry of the on a regular basis. At MASP, Gertrudes Altschul’s “Architecture or Triangle or Composition” (c. Fifties) and Geraldo de Barros’s “Frame 2 or Photoform no. 13” (c. 1949) each translate São Paulo’s chaotic fashionable building and intense industrialization into rhythmic geometric compositions.
Concurrently, in portray, Ione Saldanha, Judith Lauand, and Tomie Ohtake — three outstanding girls artists — experimented with coloration, at instances past the canvas. Lauand’s “Collection 29, Concrete 33” (1956), although Constructivist in its use of geometric kinds (on this case circles), is nonetheless removed from inflexible — its interaction of inexperienced and purple slots lower out from picket chipboard remembers the playfulness of a board recreation. In Ohtake’s “Composition” (1978), the deceivingly easy composition of purple and black paint throws off one’s sense of foreground and background, the kinds neither fairly geometric nor totally natural, luxuriously folding onto one another.
Ohtake’s work, I used to be reminded of a quote from Rodrigo de Castro’s essay, “Amilcar de Castro and the Line” (2014), through which the artist calls a line “a structure of sensibility.” This sense of a line as structured and foreclosed but pliable and tactile is exactly the supple dialectic I took away from Geometries.
Dhiani Pa’saro, Sieves (2023), marquetry
Left: set up view of works by Ione Saldanha; proper: set up view of Geometries (2015) on the São Paulo Museum of Artwork
Set up view of Geometries (2015) on the São Paulo Museum of Artwork
Left: Fabio Miguez, untitled (2024), oil and wax on canvas; proper: Abraham Cruzvillegas, “Mexico City” (1968), purple acrylic paint on newspaper clippings, cardboard, images, drawings, postcards, envelopes, tickets, vouchers, letters, drawings, posteres, flyers, playing cards, recipes, and napkins
Geometries continues on the São Paulo Museum of Artwork (Avenida Paulista 1578, São Paulo, Brazil) by way of August 3. The exhibition was curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Regina Teixeira de Barros with Matheus de Andrade.
