By LUIZ RENATO MARTINS*

A small, strict and synthetic framework like a project, with the value of a historical milestone

Challenge

In early 2004, Taisa Palhares, then curator of the Pinacoteca collection, organized a series of lectures, each dedicated to a piece from the collection. She suggested that I speak about a work by Luiz Sacilotto (1924-2003): Wave Vibration (1953, enamel on chipboard, 42,5 x 50,5 cm, São Paulo, Pinacoteca do Estado), a small, strict and synthetic painting like a project, with the value of a historical landmark. The crucial and decisive content of the name was not outlined immediately, but when, upon distinguishing its emblematic and adverse content – ​​opposed to the current national moment –, I began to understand it as a call for a lengthy and dense historical study.

After all, how had the country gone, over the course of the last 50 years, from the situation full of promises in which it was conceived Wave vibration, to the situation of chaos, uncertainty and frustration in which he had plunged? To accept it or not? A crucial crossroads, full of developments. In its premises and limits, this book is one of them.

Diagnosis: no future

It had not been long, at that time, since Chico de Oliveira (1933-2019) had launched his Platypus (2003)[I] With the author accompanied, in the debates and round tables of the time, by the preface writer Roberto Schwarz and the interlocutor Paulo Arantes, the dominant tone was that the country's future was amputated and its days were numbered.[ii] The leap forward of globalized capitalism had liquidated the national project of modernization in all its variants. The ideas of nationhood and its formation – as well as the fight against underdevelopment – ​​that had decisively informed and permeated the Brazilian debate for several decades were pulverized.

In fact, the vision of Wave vibration, so out of place in the context, raised a question. Amidst the tone of the country's dismantling, the discreet simplicity of the painting, composed only of black and white signs and regularly distributed lines, immediately raised a feeling of strangeness. This gave rise to the question: where did such a desire for a geometric language come from? After all, what had affected and infected Brazilian visual arts between 1950 and 1964, or, in general, between the return of Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954) to power and the business-military coup of 1964?

I recognized, if not the picture, the fact within myself, that I had been caught – and without appeal – by the spell between severe and revealing, strange and familiar. In short, I was faced with the maelstrom of the disturbing or the unheimlich, in Freud's words. Vertigo led me, as I said, to what the reader now has in his hands.

A common field

The laconic pictorial economy sounded like the remote allegory of a country that supposedly headed towards the future. It didn't take much for me to reconstruct the perspective of the past, in the idea of ​​“formation of a system”, as Antonio Candido (1918-2017) said. Indeed, the feeling of systematicity embedded in Wave vibration, in the unusual vigor it brought, also seemed to bring with it some joviality or novelty.

In fact, it is enough to briefly recall the modernist movement of 1922. Programmatic unity and common conversations occurred mainly among literary figures. Or, at most, dialogues were established between Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) and the writer Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), Anita Malfatti (1889-1964) and Mário de Andrade (1883-1945).

As for the painters, a quick glance at their works is enough to notice: Tarsila on one side, Anita on the other; Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976) on a third. Male and female painters turned their backs on each other. Observing what followed, what we see is similar. In their subsequent trajectories, the modernist painters seem to have become disconnected from their own works. They gave themselves over to disparate means and paths. They entered the erratic march of eclecticism and the “volubility” of ideas.[iii] – in short, in the infamous march of disparate changes, so characteristic of processes devoid of “internal causality”.[iv] Disparities that did nothing more than reflect the consequences of the colonial past and the unreflective peripheral condition.

On the other hand, the unprecedented nature of what occurred between 1950 and pre-64 is striking. When we recount the threads that came to compose that desire for geometry – first some rare and scattered ones, dating back to the end of the 1940s, and then the thick and resistant web that came to compose it in the following years – resistant to the point of even withstanding a division like the one that tore concrete art and neoconcrete art into two rival camps in June 1957, which arose from the split, we note, despite such division, the constitution of a field of common language, despite the divisions and conflicts of the time.

This presents a process that, in terms of inclusion and duration, brings unprecedented dimensions to the history of Brazilian culture. There is no need to highlight this difference, which is very evident. What is needed is to think dialectically about its complexity and developments, which has not been done.

In short, never before had artistic changes of a visual nature occurred on such a scale and to such a degree in the country. In one way or another, with the dispute taking place around some common principles and objectives – to the point that, in its conflicting dynamics, it came to constitute a dense whole of connected issues – the diverse but unified field of geometric tendencies in Brazilian art was outlined.

Hybrid geometries

In addition to the main programmatic currents – the concrete and the neoconcrete –, many unique artistic experiences circulated in this territory, which, in various ways and to different degrees, also resorted to geometry. Thus, several artists worked in the surroundings or on the margins of this field who, although they did not insert their research into the mainstream currents, can be classified, in terms of their intermittent use of geometry, in the group of “syncretics”: Volpi (1896-1988), Flexor (1907-1971), Maria Leontina (1917-1984), Milton Dacosta (1915-1988), etc.[v]

Furthermore, when one delves deeper into the organic nature of the dialectic field in question, it is possible to discern even in the pro-expressionist artists of the period, such as Oswaldo Goeldi (1895-1961), signs of an ongoing dialogue or a lively and multiple interaction with geometric tendencies. Structural elements of the language of the later Goeldi, from the mid-1940s onwards, possibly belong to this dynamic: not only the geometrical shape of the houses, which has a strong influence on the result, but also the spatiality and the risks that engender it, the cuts that act as economic forms or structuring syntheses of the scenes, all of which convey a spirit of geometry.[vi]

In short, the geometrized proposition of spatiality underlies and precedes, in Goeldi, the definition of subjective affective materials, typical of the expressionist tradition. In this way, the geometrized space gives the scene a degree of objectivity that is quite different from the fundamentally subjective ambiance that is that of the expressionist materials in the original version of Nordic Europe.

Similarly, Iberê Camargo’s (1914-1994) choice to prioritize the spool form in the late 1950s borrows, albeit unconfessedly, the intelligence of the modular and serial schemes of concrete and neoconcrete art. Likewise, later on, the explosion of the “spool form” seen in the work of the painter from Rio Grande do Sul in the mid-1960s suggests a connection with the overcoming of the formal schemes of neoconcrete art in the poetics of Lygia Clark (1920-1988) and Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). Finally, even in the works of an unusual artist of the period, Arthur Amora, an inmate at the Engenho de Dentro psychiatric clinic, the striking presence of geometry is revealed.[vii]

In short, this means that the most striking examples of Brazilian art of the period are, even in denial – and for good reason –, all hybrids of geometry. The predominance of the geometric artistic strand goes so far as to hybridize artistic research whose foundations would be naturally antithetical to it.

Training

Thus, in fact, and beyond all the schemes and dichotomies of the tendencies and movements of European art, the dialectical unity of the geometric tendencies in Brazilian art was established; a unity that achieved hegemonic force from 1950 to 1964. Cohesion among different people, and beyond the frictions and rivalries of groups and conduct, manifested in the constitution of a discursive field in which the works interacted, even when through mutual repulsion. Debates and confrontations thus developed in the course of a game, comprising, in one way or another, reciprocal determinations.

The terms of the issue will certainly change profoundly after 1964, with the New Figuration movement that brought with it some exponents of geometric abstractionism, snatching them from both the concrete art and neoconcrete art groups. But for now the issue is not this, but rather establishing the initial core of the desire for geometry. It is in this context that Luiz Sacilotto's artistic activity was born and developed, which is emblematic of concrete art, its most cherished principles and objectives.

Exemplary case

In this sense, Luiz Sacilotto's work serves as a collective parameter and is useful for assessing the method and its aspiration in light of the historical moment. In effect, with its ethical logic, operational rigor and the straightforward austerity of its programmatic purpose, this poetics sought to displace the artisanal and subjective forging of art, subsuming the singularity of the work and the case to a larger aesthetic project. It intended to establish an updated aesthetic truth and nurture a collective poetic party. The manifesto RUPTURE (1952) was clear about this.[viii]

From isolated cases to the system

As for the general and synthetic view of the process, it is worth establishing a historical parallel. The emergence of the cycle of geometric trends in the country echoes and duplicates a previous episode: that of the formation of the Brazilian modern architecture system, some 15 to 20 years earlier.[ix]

Based on statements and comments by Lucio Costa (1902-1998), Otília Arantes established milestones and decisive factors in this process.[X] Thus, he highlighted the formation of the system, in contrast to the occurrence of isolated or “unpaired” cases, as Lucio Costa said.[xi] The decisive milestone in this perspective was the official commission, in 1937, of the architectural project for the new headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Public Health.

As a result, the structuring process of a system is outlined, integrated by authors, works and audience, united by mutual and consistent relationships sufficient to generate parameters and elements that can be transmitted from one experience to another, based on reciprocal connections. This creates continuity in the form of a fabric of interwoven historical experiences, which subsequent experiences can consult and develop.

Genesis and criteria of the idea of ​​formation

The concept of forming a national artistic-cultural system comes from Antonio Candido, who established it according to literary parameters, in Formation of Brazilian Literature – Decisive Moments 1750-1880.[xii] The original idea of formation comes from before. It comes from several authors who began to write about it, in the wake of the changes brought about by the so-called “Revolution of 1930”: Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987), Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982) and Caio Prado Jr. (1907-1990).[xiii] Previously, in 1931, Mário de Andrade had been the first in Brazil to raise the issue and highlight the importance of the objective of training.

A few generations earlier, Sílvio Romero (1851-1914), who was studied by Candido, had pointed out the problem of the lack of continuity in ideas as a Brazilian issue, which outlined the problem to which the idea of ​​formation sought to respond.[xiv]

In architecture, the elements that weighed in a combined way were: a greater historical factor, the 1930 Revolution and its political and cultural developments,[xv] and the “external influx” or seminal fact, embodied in the arrival in Brazil of the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965).

In the case of painting, it is clear that since the beginning of the 1950s there has been a progressive consolidation of a habitat for abstract and geometric art in Brazil, as had previously occurred in Argentina.[xvi] This is where the so-called concrete art came into being in Brazil.[xvii]

The totem and the habitat

As in the case of the scheme of formation of modern architecture in the country, two factors, a larger historical process and a fact of an external order – and with a function that could be called “totemic” –, combined to result in the propagation of the new gospel of concrete art in artistic circles in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The historical process was manifested, among other signs, by the foundation of museums that came to constitute a habitat for geometric trends: the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), in 1947, and the two Museums of Modern Art, in São Paulo (MAM-SP), in 1948, and in Rio (MAM-RJ), in 1949. Similarly, the series of International Art Biennials in São Paulo began in 1951.[xviii]

All these institutions were based on private patronage: in the case of São Paulo, which took the lead, the industrialist F. Matarazzo Sobrinho (1898-1977), responsible for the Bienal and MAM-SP, and the magnate Assis Chateaubriand (1892-1968), owner of a newspaper and media conglomerate, in the case of MASP. Therefore, it was, in fact, from the circuit created by the capitalist expansion of production in industry, services and international trade commodities and manufactures that concrete art was nourished by, just like its similar formations in South America.

In the field of visual discourses, such flowerings of geometry were coeval not only with the expansion of manufacturing production and international trade and the founding of new museums, but with the construction of new multilateral institutions to regulate the international economy: the World Bank (1945), the International Monetary Fund (1945) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) (1948).

They all shared an ideal of Weberian rationality. Thus, geometric languages ​​symbolically gravitated, in their own way, around the development programs of some peripheral countries, which placed optimism and invested expectations of various kinds in the premise of rationality for trade and finance, alleged by the expansion of production and international trade.

Totem function: naturalizing external genealogies

To the installation on a larger scale of a habitat for geometric languages ​​– consistent with the adoption of regulatory bodies and standards on an international scale – came the occasional intervention of another external factor, exerted, in this case, by the arrival in 1950 of the Swiss artist and architect Max Bill (1908-1994) for a retrospective exhibition of his works at the São Paulo Museum of Art. Analogous to the series of effects triggered in the field of architecture in Brazil by the arrival in 1937 of Le Corbusier, Max Bill's impact on Brazilian visual arts was translated into the totemic role he played in the cycle of geometric trends.

Max Bill was at that time the main articulator of the Ulm School, a declared successor to the Bauhaus (1919-33) founded by Gropius (1883-1969) and closed by the Nazis. The architect and designer Swiss, a student at the Bauhaus in Dassau in 1927 and 1928, he attracted a handful of young people interested or already initiated in geometric languages ​​and in natural, and linked them to the activities developed in Ulm. In fact, in a similar way, he would also take the Argentine graphic artist Tomás Maldonado (1955-1922) there in 2018.

In summary, in these terms, the combined occurrence of two characteristic tendencies of dependency processes was verified: the intervention of an external agent – ​​therefore totemized – in conjunction with the dual or compensatory oscillation between localism and cosmopolitanism.[xx] In this way, one can summarize the processes that occurred, both in relation to Le Corbusier and Max Bill: the foreign author, enjoying the prestige inherent to a collection of achievements abroad, proposes a new paradigm and, with this, brings greater perspectives. In addition, he offers the possibility of union between a local group and metropolitan institutions.

This provides an opportunity for internationalization and for escaping the provincial condition – in short, the chance for recognition by the greater, which is highly valued in peripheral, semi-colonial or dependent cultures. Such processes repeat themselves historically, through the renewal of totemic cycles that, in turn, structure and reproduce relations of dependence.

When geometry made offspring

Soon after, the 20.10st International Art Biennial of São Paulo (October 23.12.1951 – December 1926, 2005) took place. In addition to Max Bill, some of the young local artists who had been introduced to the virtues of geometry were also awarded prizes: Antonio Maluf (1923-1973), Ivan Serpa (1928-2020), Almir Mavignier and Abraham Palatnik (20.02.1952-1952). Other events that extolled the same values ​​followed: the XNUMXst National Exhibition of Abstract Art, opened on February XNUMX, XNUMX at the Quitandinha Hotel in Petrópolis; the founding manifesto of the Ruptura group and its first exhibition in December XNUMX, at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP).

This was followed by the founding of the Rio de Janeiro group Frente, whose initial exhibition, opened on June 30.06.1954, 1956, was held at the gallery of the Instituto Cultural Brasil – Estados Unidos, in Rio de Janeiro. The 4st National Exhibition of Concrete Art – held in December 18.12.1956 at MAM-SP (December 1957–XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX) and then at MAM-RJ (January and February XNUMX), whose provisional headquarters were then located at the Ministry of Education and Health – represented the culmination of the efforts of artists from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro united in favor of geometric art.

In June 1957, the regional families of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro split, involving differences in practices and perspectives. The split was led, on the one hand, by the art critic and poet Ferreira Gullar (1930-2016), who would later play a key role in the formation of the neoconcrete movement, and, on the other, by the concrete poets of São Paulo.[xx] From this crisis came the 22st Neoconcrete Art Exhibition, opened on March 1959, XNUMX, at MAM-RJ, and at the same time the “Neoconcrete Manifesto”, published in the Sunday Supplement of the Newspapers in Brazil.[xxx] Finally, instead of weakening, crisis and splitting, generating exhibitions and manifestos, they show vigor and open new fronts of production.

Wave vibration – exemplary case

Having taken the general angle, it is now also necessary to specify the issue on the molecular scale of painting. Wave vibration, which triggered and motivates this study. The bichromatic and curvilinear construction, through a regular succession of white modular rods or segments, traced on a black plane, far from constituting a finding, authorial arbitrariness or the result of mimetic intention, establishes the rigorous graphic scheme of the mechanical development of an undulating dynamic, like the signs of a path.

Would it present the design of a mechanism or the expected diagram of its operation? In this sense, if we attribute to it the function of a project or plan, it could well allude to a conveyor belt, or to the partial schematic representation of two circular toothed parts that, reciprocally engaged, rotate in reverse.

The record made, of course, does not concern the purpose of attributing a function to the curve, since as a pictorial object the painting is intended for contemplation. In this sense, its primary meaning is inseparable from the affirmation of a visual program based on principles of clarity and order. Furthermore, since the structures of the two sections of the curve – although the one on the left has an ascending direction and the one on the right a descending direction – are essentially the same despite being opposite, it can be deduced that the construction, beyond the inverse directions, complies with symmetry, as well as implies equitable developments, even with distinct or opposite directions; therefore, in a certain way, it also suggests freedom.

Are these qualities peculiar to the work? Quite the contrary, a consultation of works by Luiz Sacilotto from 1952 and 1953, and of artists who, alongside him, were part of the concrete art movement, indicates that Wave vibration can be taken as a precursor example of the concrete art program in Brazil.

In the constancy of purposes and procedures, and in the homogeneity of the results achieved in the works, two recurring aspects lead to the inference: (ii) the reiterated affirmation of the supremacy of the idea over the execution, that is, of the planned act over the unpredictability of phenomena; (ii) the refusal of ambivalence or ambiguity in the language adopted.

Once again, is this perhaps a question of idiosyncrasies or stylistic singularities on the part of Luiz Sacilotto? Certainly not. In addition to finding similar attitudes and works in other artists of the Ruptura group, what occurs here is the rigorous application of the principles of the group's founding manifesto – which, in turn, strictly adheres to the precepts explicit in the text “Bases da arte concreto”, written in 1930 and published in Paris by the Dutch artist Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931).[xxiii]

The text stipulated six fundamental principles for concrete art: “(i) art is universal; (ii) the work of art must be entirely conceived and formed by the mind before its execution. It must receive nothing from the formal data of nature, nor from sensuality, nor from sentimentality […]; (iii) the painting must be entirely constructed with purely plastic elements. That is, planes and colors. A pictorial element only means 'itself' and, consequently, the painting has no other meaning than 'itself'; (iv) the construction of the painting, as well as its elements, must be simple and visually controlled; (v) the technique must be mechanical, that is, exact, anti-impressionist; (vi) [the] effort for absolute clarity is imposed”.

The text concluded: “Most painters work in the manner of confectioners and dressmakers. On the contrary, we work with the data of mathematics (Euclidean or non-Euclidean) and science, that is, with intellectual means. With humanism in art, many nonsense has been justified. If you can’t draw a straight line freehand, you take the ruler […]. The work of art conceived in this way achieves the clarity that will be the basis of a new culture.” [xxiii]

Do São Paulo's concrete art and that of Sacilotto, included in it, meet such precepts? In fact, in Wave vibration, there is no tonal value or artifice, in chromatic terms. The “color-thought” is clear and distinct. It prevails, in Wave vibration, a dual opposition between white linear forms and a black background, which contrast sharply, even more so because they are enamel-based. They therefore obey the precept of “clear, simple and visually controllable” chromatic relations, as advocated by the aforementioned principles of concrete art.

Likewise, in the drawing, there are two similar series of rods or straight line segments, which are articulated with each other. One series, as we have seen, develops upwards; the other, downwards. The continuous arrangement of the two developments is completed in the wave-like figure referred to in the title. The central segment or rod, which connects the two series, corresponds to a section of the main diagonal of the painting. None of the other components of the wave, given by the regular distribution of the white rods or modular segments, are placed in a random or irregular manner either.

Most likely, its layout was established using a ruler or similar. Thus, the ruler was fixed, for the left-hand series, in the lower left corner, and, for the right-hand series, in the upper right corner. The regular and equal angles between one modular segment and the next are due, analogously and probably, to the use of a protractor or equivalent. In short, equal proportions and numbers, on the right and on the left, establish the similarity of the two curvilinear developments, despite the opposite directions.

Here, therefore, we have the management of the pictorial surface through the planning of its limits and divisions or internal orders, according to a constant law or idea. What is this idea? The rhythmic idea, more graphic than pictorial, of two curves that evoke trajectories of pointers, of distinct quadrants and opposite centers, and that are integrated into a third curve. The latter governs the union of both in continuity and symmetry. Thus, from the successful juxtaposition of the two simple curves, a third is born, this one compound and, as we have seen, with its apex on the left and its lowest point on the right.

Enough, as one of the concrete artists would say! In these terms, the field of lawful reading is established and fixed, according to the original design of the painting. Careful observation reveals how the painting was conceived, that is, the system of laws in force within it. This is what is obtained as a synthesis and corollary of the mode of contemplation proposed by the work.

In fact, within the limits of concrete poetics, it is inappropriate to extrapolate the data presented to speculate on meanings, which would entail going beyond the universe of painting, and attributing – inappropriately – a semantic content to the graphic and chromatic components mentioned above. After all, according to the charter of principles, “the painting has no other meaning than 'itself' (…). A woman, a tree, a cow, are concrete in their natural state, but in their painted state, they are abstract, illusory, vague, speculative, whereas a plane is a plane, a line is a line; no more, no less”.

However, a historical and dialectical reading cannot be limited to face value. It must go against the grain of what is stated in the charter of principles or the program of concrete art. Let us move on. What, then, can we see beyond the totem-program and its taboo?[xxv]

*Luiz Renato Martins is a professor-advisor of the PPG in Visual Arts (ECA-USP); author, among other books, of The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil (Chicago, Haymarket/HMBS).

Notes

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[I] Francisco de OLIVEIRA, Critique of Dualistic Reason / The Platypus. Sao Paulo, Boitempo, 2003.

[ii] See Roberto SCHWARZ, “Preface with Questions”, in Francisco de OLIVEIRA, on. cit., pp. 11-23. See also “End of the Century”, in idem, Brazilian Sequences, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1999, pp. 155-62; Paulo Eduardo ARANTES, “The Brazilian Fracture of the World”, in Zero to the Left, São Paulo, Conrad, 2004; and the block of texts no. 5, on Brazil, in idem, Extinção, São Paulo, Boitempo, 2007, pp. 245-92.

[iii][iii] For the volubility as an aesthetic trait of the Brazilian social structure, see R. SCHWARZ, A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, São Paulo, Duas Cidades, 1990, and idem, “A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism” (interview) in idem, Sequences…, op. cit., pp. 220-6.

[iv] “A fundamental stage in overcoming dependence is the ability to produce works of the first order, influenced not by immediate foreign models, but by previous national examples. This means the establishment of what could be called somewhat mechanically internal causality, which makes even more fruitful the loans taken from other cultures.” Cf. Antonio CANDIDO, “Literatura e Subdesenvolvimento”, in Argument, year 1, n. 1, São Paulo, October, 1973, republished in idem, Education by Night and Other Essays,New York, 1989, p. 153.

[v] See Paulo Sérgio DUARTE, “Moderns out of line”, in Aracy AMARAL (org.), Constructive Art in Brazil: Adolpho Leirner Collection [exhibition catalogue], São Paulo, Improvements Company/ DBA Graphic Arts/ MAM-SP, 1998, pp. 183-221.

[vi] See, for example, online images of Oswaldo Goeldi: The Thief (1955), ; Slum (sd), ; Cursed House (c. 1955), ; Silence (c. 1957), ; Nightly (c. 1950, 19,5 × 27 cm), ; Nightly (c. 1950, 20,8 × 26,9 cm), ; and Nightly (c. 1950, 20,5 × 27,7 cm), .

[vii] Information about Artur Amora is scarce. For a brief but thought-provoking note by painter Almir Mavignier (1925-2018) – at the time founding director of the painting studio at the Engenho de Dentro psychiatric hospital – about the black and white compositions produced by Amora between 1949 and 1951, which are part of the collection of the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente (Rio de Janeiro), see . Accessed on 16.09.2024/XNUMX/XNUMX.

[viii]“[…] It is the old: all the varieties and hybridizations of naturalism; the mere negation of naturalism, that is, the ‘wrong’ naturalism of children, of the insane, of the ‘primitives’, of the expressionists, of the surrealists, etc…; the hedonistic non-figurativism, a product of gratuitous taste, which seeks the mere excitement of pleasure or displeasure. It is the NEW: the expressions based on new artistic principles; all the experiences that tend towards the renewal of the essential values ​​of visual art (space-time, movement, and matter); the artistic intuition endowed with clear and intelligent principles and with great possibilities for practical development; giving art a defined place in the framework of contemporary spiritual work, considering it a means of knowledge deducible from concepts, placing it above opinion, requiring prior knowledge for its judgment.” See Lothar CHARROUX, Waldemar CORDEIRO, Geraldo de BARROS, Kazmer FEJER, Leopold HAAR, Luís SACILOTTO, Anatol WLADYSLAW, “Manifesto Ruptura”, in A. AMARAL (org.), Brazilian Constructive Project in Art (1950-1962), exhibition catalog (São Paulo, State Art Gallery, 14.06 – 03.07.1977; Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Modern Art), Rio de Janeiro/ São Paulo, MEC – Funarte/ Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro/ Secretariat of Culture, Science and Technology of the State of São Paulo/ State Art Gallery, 1977, p. 69.

[ix] See “'Free-form': The Brazilian mode of abstraction or malaise in history”, in The Earth is Round, 20.10.2024, available at: https://aterraeredonda.com.br/forma-livre/.

[X] In “Esquema de Lucio Costa”, Otília Arantes combines elements of the urban planner’s account and certain decisive ideas with Antonio Candido’s scheme, according to which the latter pointed to the formation of a literary system in Brazil that functioned as a guiding thread for debates about the country. See OBF Arantes, “Esquema…”, in Ana Luiza NOBRE, João Masao KAMITA, Otavio LEONÍDIO, Roberto CONDURU (orgs.), A Modern Way of Being: Lucio Costa and Contemporary Criticism, New York, 2004, pp. 84-103.

To resume the same perspective around the problem of formation, in other essays by the author, see also idem and Paulo Eduardo ARANTES, Meaning of Formation: Three Studies on Antonio Candido, Gilda de Mello e Souza and Lucio Costa, Sao Paulo, Peace and Land, 1997.

[xi] See L. Costa, “A lot of construction, some architecture and a miracle” in Recording an Experience, Brasilia, Arts Company, 1995, apoud OBF ARANTES, “Scheme…”, op. cit.

[xii] See, for the notions in question formation e work, Antonio CANDIDO, “Preface to the Second Edition”, in Formation of Brazilian Literature: Decisive Moments 1750-1880, Rio de Janeiro, Ouro sobre Azul, 2006, pp. 17-22; idem, “Variations on themes of Formation” (collection of interviews) in idem, Intervention Texts, selection, presentation and notes by Vinicius Dantas, São Paulo, Livraria Duas Cidades/ Editora 34, 2002, pp. 93-120.

[xiii] See A. CANDIDO, “The meaning of Brazil roots”, in SB of NETHERLANDS, Brazil roots, Rio de Janeiro, José Olympio Bookstore Ed., 1969, 6th edition, pp. XI-XXII.

[xiv] “Our national formation is not natural, it is not spontaneous, it is not, so to speak, logical”, cf. M. de ANDRADE, Aspects of Brazilian Literature [1931],São Paulo, Martins, sd, p. 8, apoud PE ARANTES, “Provisions of a literary critic on the periphery of capitalism”, in Meaning of Formation…, op. cit., p. 18. On the “discovery of the lack”, by Sílvio Romero, see idem p. 15. On the evolution and developments of the debate, going through the ideas of “traditionalizing” the new and the meaning of formation as decolonization, see R. SCHWARZ, “The seven breaths of a book”, in idem, Sequences Brazilians, op. cit., p. 48 et seq. On observations and reflections from 1912 onwards by Trotsky on the same subject, see LR MARTINS, “Far beyond pure form”, in Neil Davidson, Uneven and Combined Development: Modernity, Modernism and Permanent Revolution, ed. and critical rev. LR Martins, apr. Steve Edwards, pref. Ricardo Antunes, trans.

[xv] On the Revolution of 30 and its developments, see Antonio CANDIDO, “The Revolution of 30 and culture”, in idem, Education at Night, Rio de Janeiro, Gold over Blue, 2006, 5th edition, pp. 219-40.

[xvi] For the precedence and characteristics of similar phenomena of emergence of geometric trends in South America, also called “constructive” (sic), see A. AMARAL, “Abstract constructivist trends in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia”, in Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, Waldo Ramussen (ed.) with Fatima Bercht and Elizabeth Ferrer, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1993, pp. 86-99. For a discussion of this designation, see below.

[xvii] In 1947, the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987) published, in issue 9 of the magazine Joaquim, from Curitiba, the article “Inventionism” about Argentine concrete painters (I owe this indication to Aracy Amaral). Between 1948 and 49, Mário Pedrosa wrote his thesis on the Gestalt: On the Affective Nature of the Work of Art (presented in 1949). At the same time, some artists, almost always in isolation, began to experiment with geometric forms: Mary Vieira (1927-2001), Franz Weissmann (1911-2005), Luiz Sacilotto (1924-2003), Abraham Palatnik (1928-2020), Almir Mavignier (1925), Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998), Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973), then in Italy, etc. For Pedrosa's thesis, see M. PEDROSA, Form and Aesthetic Perception: Selected Texts II, org. OBF Arantes, São Paulo, Edusp, 1996, pp. 105-230. See also OBF ARANTES, Mario Pedrosa: Critical Itinerary, New York, 2005, p.

[xviii] See Mário PEDROSA, “The Biennial from here to there”, in idem, Arts Policy: Selected Texts I, organization and presentation by Otília Beatriz Fiori Arantes, São Paulo, Edusp, 1995, pp. 216-84. See also Francisco ALAMBERT and Polyana CANHETE, São Paulo Biennials: From the Age of Museums to the Age of Curators, Sao Paulo, Boitempo, 2004.

[xx] “If it were possible to establish a law of evolution for our spiritual life, we could perhaps say that it is governed by the dialectic of localism and cosmopolitanism, manifested in the most diverse ways. Sometimes the premeditated and sometimes violent affirmation of literary nationalism, with the desire to even create a different language; sometimes the declared conformism, the conscious imitation of European standards. […] This process can be called dialectical because it has really consisted of a progressive integration of literary and spiritual experience, through the tension between the local data (which presents itself as the substance of expression) and the molds inherited from the European tradition (which present themselves as the form of expression).” A. CANDIDO, “Literatura e cultura de 1900 a 1945”, in idem, Literature and Society, Rio de Janeiro, Gold over Blue, 2008, 10th edition, p. 117.

[xx] The split between the groups was sealed with the publication of two texts: on the Rio de Janeiro side, “Concrete Poetry: An Intuitive Experience”, by Reynaldo Jardim (1926-2011), Ferreira Gullar and Oliveira Bastos; on the São Paulo side, “From the Phenomenology of Composition to the Mathematics of Composition”, by Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003). Cf. A. AMARAL (org.), Constructive Art…, op. cit., p. 294.

[xxx] The manifesto was published in the Sunday Supplement edition of Newspapers in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, 21-22.03.1959, signed by: Amilcar de Castro (1920-2002), Ferreira Gullar, Franz Weissmann (1911-2005), Lygia Clark (1920-1988), Lygia Pape (1927-2004), Reynaldo Jardim and Theon Spanudis (1915-1986).

[xxiii] The term “concrete art”" He obtained his official birth certificate in a magazine of the same name, edited by Van Doesburg. A companion of Mondrian (1872-1944) in the neoplasticist movement, he was also a professor at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1924.

[xxiii] See T. Van Doesburg, “Concrete Art”, apoud A. AMARAL (org.), Construction Project…, op. cit., pp. 42-44.

[xxv] I appreciate Regina Araki's review.

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