SÃO PAULO — Geometric abstraction occupies such a distinguished place within the historical past of Brazilian trendy and modern artwork that I used to be shocked 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 displaying them to the general public.
Geometries, certainly one of 5 Essays on MASP, a sequence 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 Nineteen Fifties to the current, highlights the vigor of geometric artwork in Latin America and, to some extent, the US, significantly Brazil’s Constructivist, Concrete, Neo-Concrete, and modern 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 actually sense the rationality of the geometric synthesis of de Castro’s works in metal, equivalent to “Untitled” (1996), his means of chopping and folding types, making the fabric seem pliable, practically respiratory, 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” (Eighties), two red-painted L-shapes laid on their sides, creates a way of geometry gone astray. And Clark’s metallic Critters (1960–64), certainly one of which can also be featured, convey the same tactile sensibility.
Concrete and Neo-Concrete artwork additionally impacted different actions and media. As an example, they influenced the quickly creating Brazilian trendy pictures, 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. Nineteen Fifties) and Geraldo de Barros’s “Frame 2 or Photoform no. 13” (c. 1949) each translate São Paulo’s chaotic trendy development and intense industrialization into rhythmic geometric compositions.
Concurrently, in portray, Ione Saldanha, Judith Lauand, and Tomie Ohtake — three exceptional ladies artists — experimented with shade, at occasions past the canvas. Lauand’s “Collection 29, Concrete 33” (1956), although Constructivist in its use of geometric types (on this case circles), is however removed from inflexible — its interaction of inexperienced and crimson slots minimize out from picket chipboard recollects the playfulness of a board recreation. In Ohtake’s “Composition” (1978), the deceivingly easy composition of crimson and black paint throws off one’s sense of foreground and background, the types neither fairly geometric nor completely 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), wherein 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), crimson acrylic paint on newspaper clippings, cardboard, pictures, 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 August 3. The exhibition was curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Regina Teixeira de Barros with Matheus de Andrade.
