Description
Book SynopsisToward the middle of the 1950s, abstract art became a dominant trend in the Latin American cultural scene. Many artists incorporated elements of abstraction into their rigorous artistic vocabularies, while at the same time, the representation of geometric lines and structures filtered into everyday life, appearing in textiles, posters, murals, and landscapes. The translation of a field-changing Spanish-language book, Abstract Crossings analyzes the relationship between, on the one hand, the emergence of abstract proposals in avant-garde groups and, on the other, the institutionalization and newfound hegemony of abstract poetics as part of Latin America's imaginary of modernization. A profusion of mid-century artistic institutional exchanges between Argentina and Brazil makes a study of the trajectories of abstraction in these two countries particularly valuable. Examining the work of artists such as Max Bill, Lygia Clark, Waldemar Cordeiro, and Tomás Maldonado, author María Amalia García rewrites the artistic history of the period and proposes a novel reading of the cultural dialogue between Argentina and Brazil. This is the first book in the new Studies on Latin American Art series, supported by a gift from the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).
Trade Review"García’s study serves as a model of the ways in which thoughtful and creative archival research can significantly alter the narratives we tell of both individual artists and larger movements. What this author builds from archival sources is a compelling story in which nationalism and internationalism are irrevocably intertwined, and the most genuine desire for the latter can be made to serve the former. It thus presents South American concretism as both an avant-garde project and a tool of cultural politics and argues that the line between the two is not easily fixed." * Art Journal *
"A game changer for the histories of Latin American abstraction."
* Latin American Research Review *
Table of ContentsPREFACE TO THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION
AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
1.Arturo Magazine and the Re-Situating of the Avant-Garde
in the Southern Cone
2.Inventionism’s Projects and Projections: The Asociación Arte
Concreto-Invención (Concrete-Invention Art Association)
3.Buenos Aires–São Paulo: Interconnections between Cultural
Institutions and Art Criticism in the Construction of Abstract Art
4.New Visions of Tradition: The Place of Concrete Art on the
Argentine-Brazilian Map
5.Regional Concretism: South American Interventions on and
Confrontations with the Paradigm of Modern Art and Architecture
6.Art Exhibitions and Policies of Exchange: Argentine Art in Brazil and
Brazilian Art in Argentina
7.Inside or Outside Art’s Transformations?
Conclusion
ARCHIVES AND SOURCES
REFERENCES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INDEX
