Concrete art
Concrete art was an art movement with a strong emphasis on geometrical abstraction. The term was first formulated by Theo van Doesburg and was then used by him in 1930 to define the difference between his vision of art and that of other abstract artists of the time. After his death in 1931, the term was further defined and popularized by Max Bill, who organized the first international exhibition in 1944 and went on to help promote the style in Latin America. The term was taken up widely after World War 2 and promoted through a number of international exhibitions and art movements.
Origins
After the formal break up of
Following this, van Doesburg proceeded to propose a rival group, , positioning them as the more radical group of abstractionists.
"BASIS OF CONCRETE PAINTING
We say:
- Art is universal.
- A work of art must be entirely conceived and shaped by the mind before its execution. It shall not receive anything of nature’s or sensuality’s or sentimentality’s formal data. We want to exclude lyricism, drama, symbolism, and so on.
- The painting must be entirely built up with purely plastic elements, namely surfaces and colors. A pictorial element does not have any meaning beyond "itself"; as a consequence, a painting does not have any meaning other than "itself".
- The construction of a painting, as well as that of its elements, must be simple and visually controllable.
- The painting technique must be mechanic, i.e., exact, anti-impressionistic.
- An effort toward absolute clarity is mandatory."[4]
The group was short lived and only exhibited together on three occasions in 1930 as part of larger group exhibitions, the first being at the Salon des Surindépendents in June, followed by Production Paris 1930 in
Theoretical background
In 1930,
As van Doesburg had pointed out in his manifesto, in order to be universal, art must abandon subjectivity and find impersonal inspiration purely in the elements of which it is constructed: line, plane and color. Some later artists associated with this tendency, such as
Development
While Abstraction-Création was a grouping of all modernistic tendencies, there were those within it who carried the idea of mathematically inspired art and the term ‘concrete art’ to other countries when they moved elsewhere. A key figure among them was Joaquín Torres García, who returned to South America in 1934 and mentored artists there. Some of those went on to found the group Arte Concreto Invención in Buenos Aires in 1945.[11] Another was the designer Max Bill, who had studied at the Bauhaus in 1927–9. After returning to Switzerland, he helped organize the Allianz group to champion the ideals of Concrete Art. In 1944 he organized the first international exhibition in Basle and at the same time founded abstract-konkret, the monthly bulletin of the Gallerie des Eaux Vives in Zurich.[12] By 1960 Bill was organizing a large retrospective exhibition of Concrete Art in Zürich illustrating 50 years of its development.
Abstraction, which had been quietly gathering momentum in Italy between the world wars, emerged officially in the Movimento d'arte concreta (MAC) in 1948, whose foremost exponent, Alberto Magnelli, was another past member of Abstraction-Création and had been living in France for many years. However, some seventy native painters were represented in the Arte astratta e concreta in Italia exhibition held three years later at the National Gallery in Rome.[13] In Paris recognition of this approach resulted in several exhibitions of which the first was titled Art Concret and held at the Gallerie René Drouin during the summer of 1945. Described as "the first major post-World War 2 exhibition of abstract art",[14] the artists exhibited there included the older generation of abstractionists: Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay, César Domela, Otto Freundlich, Jean Gorin, Auguste Herbin, Wassily Kandinsky, Alberto Magnelli, Piet Mondrian, Antoine Pevsner and van Doesburg. In the following year a series of annual exhibitions began in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, which included some of these artists and were devoted, according to its articles of association, to "works of art commonly called: concrete art, non-figurative or abstract art".[15]
In 1951 Groupe Espace was founded in France to harmonize painting, sculpture and architecture as a single discipline. This grouped sculptors and architects with old established artists such as
As time progressed, a distinction began to be made between 'cold abstraction', which was identified with geometric Concrete Art, and 'warm abstraction', which, as it moved towards the various kinds of
International dimension
Museums
- Haus Konstruktiv museum of constructive and concrete art in Zurich, Switzerland
- Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany
- The Mondriaan House- Museum For Constructive And Concrete Art, Amersfoort, Netherlands
Bibliography
- Concrete Cuba: Cuban Geometric Abstraction from the 1950s, 2016, David Zwirner Books, ISBN 9781941701331[21]
- Dempsey, Amy. Art in the Modern Era: A Guide to Styles, Schools & Movements , NY: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2002
- Fabre, Gladys & Doris Wintgens Hötte : Van Doesburg & the international avant-garde. Constructing a new world, London, Tate Publishing, 2010.
- Fogelström, Lollo (ed.): Otto G. Carlsund: konstnär, kritiker och utställningsarrangör, Liljevalchs konsthall, 2007.
- Gottschaller, Pia; Le Blanc, Aleca (2017). Gottschaller, Pia; Le Blanc, Aleca; Gilbert, Zanna; Learner, Tom; Perchuk, Andrew (eds.). Making Art Concrete: Works from Argentina and Brazil in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Exhibition catalog). Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute and Getty Research Institute / Getty Publications. ()
- Haftmann, Werner. Painting in the Twentieth Century , vol.1, second edition, London 1965 OCLC 32998790
- Heese, Luisa for the museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg; Riese, Hans-Peter; Kunze, Franziska (2022). Konkrete Kunst in Europa nach 1945. Die Sammlung Peter C. Ruppert: Katalog für das Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg [Concrete Art in Europe after 1945. The Peter C. Ruppert Collection: Catalog for the Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg] (in German and English). Cologne: Wienand. ISBN 978-3868326086.
- Pérez-Barreiro, Gabriel; Borja-Villel, Manuel (2013). Concrete Invention: Colección Patricia Phelps De Cisneros: Reflections on Geometric Abstraction from Latin America and Its Legacy. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía/Turner. ()
- Stiles, Kristine, "Geometric Abstraction" in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Univ California 2012, pp.77-80
References
- ^ Wintgens Hötte, Doris (2009) "Van Doesburg tackles the continent: passion, drive & calculation", in: Gladys Fabre & Doris Wintgens Hötte (red.): Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World, London, Tate Publishing, 2010, pp. 10-19.
- ^ Jean Luc Daval, "Avant Garde Art 1914-1939", Skira, Geneva 1980, p.171
- ^ Jean Hélion, "Art Concret 1930: Four Painters and a Magazine", in Double Rhythm: Writings About Painting, Skyhorse Publishing 2014
- ^ [fabstract Springer p.413-4]
- ^ AC: Internationell utställning av postkubistisk konst, Stockholm, 1930, p.3
- ^ Jean Luc Daval, "Avant Garde Art 1914-1939, Skira, Geneva 1980", p.171
- ^ Haftmann p.285
- ^ Haftmann p.340
- ^ Haftmann p.341
- ^ Monolith on the Water—Max Bill’s "Continuity" in a New Location; Deutsche Bank Art works
- ^ Stiles
- ^ Stiles
- ^ Haftmann, p.340
- ^ Ann Lee Morgan, Historical Dictionary of Contemporary Art, Rowman & Littlefield 2016
- ^ Georges Folmer, "Le Salon des Réalités Nouvelles : pour et contre l’art concret", p.2
- ^ Eve Roy, "La présence fondamentale de la plastique, L’exposition du Groupe Espace à Biot en 1954: un essai de synthèse des arts", 2013
- ^ Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames & Hudson, London 1990, p.120
- ^ Alessandro Del Puppo, L'arte contemporanea: Il secondo novecento, Einaudi, 2013, table 3 page 238.
- ^ Stiles
- ^ Béatrice Gross, Stephen Hoban: François Morellet, Yale University Press, 2019, p. 59.
- ^ "ERNESTO MENÉNDEZ-CONDE reviews "CONCRETE CUBA"". 2017-04-11.
External links
- Washington State University/Dr. Michael Delahoyde; commentary on Concrete art
- Monolith on the Water—Max Bill's "Continuity" in a New Location; Deutsche Bank Art works Archived 2019-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
- Term defined by tate.org
- Kendall Art Center Three Cuban concrete abstract artists: Sandú Darié, Pedro de Oraá and Loló Soldevilla