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 De stijl, following the last issue of its magazine in 1928, van Doesburg began considering the creation of a new collective centered on a similar approach to abstraction. In 1929 he discussed his plans with Uruguayan painter JoaquĂn Torres-GarcĂa, with candidates for membership of this group including Georges Vantongerloo, Constantin BrĂąncuÈi, FrantiĆĄek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart and Antoine Pevsner, among others. However, van Doesburg divided the candidates between artists whose work was still not completely abstract and those free of referentiality. As this classification entailed the possibility of a disqualification of the first group, the discussions between the two soon broke down, prompting Torres-GarcĂa to team up instead with Belgian critic Michel Seuphor and form the group Cercle et CarrĂ©.[1]
Following this, van Doesburg proceeded to propose a rival group, Art Concret, championing a geometrical abstract art closely related to the aesthetics of Neo-plasticism. In his opinion, the term 'abstract' as applied to art had negative connotations; in its place he preferred the more positive term âconcreteâ.[2] Van Doesburg was eventually joined by Otto G. Carlsund, LĂ©on Arthur Tutundjian, Jean HĂ©lion and his fellow lodger, the typographer Marcel Wantz (1911-79), who soon left to take up a political career.[3] In May 1930 they published a single issue of their own French-language magazine, Revue Art Concret, which featured a joint manifesto, 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 natureâs or sensualityâs or sentimentalityâs 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 âitselfâ; as a consequence, a painting does not have any meaning other than âitselfâ.
- 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 SurindĂ©pendents in June, followed by Production Paris 1930 in ZĂŒrich, and in August the exhibition AC: Internationell utstĂ€llning av postkubistisk konst (International exhibition of post-cubist art) in Stockholm, curated by Carlsund. In the catalog to the latter, Carlsund states that the group's "programme is clear: absolute Purism. Neo-Plasticism, Purism and Constructivism combined".[5] Shortly before van Doesburg's death in 1931, the members of the Art Concret group still active in Paris united with the larger association Abstraction-CrĂ©ation.
Theoretical background
In 1930, Michel Seuphor had defined the role of the abstract artist in the first issue of Cercle et CarrĂ©. It was âto establish, on the foundations of a structure that is simple, severe and unadorned in every part, and within a basis of unconcealed narrow unity with this structure, an architecture which, using the technical means available to its period, expresses in a clear language that which is truly immanent and immutable.â[6] The art historian Werner Haftmann traces the development of the pure abstraction proposed by Seuphor to the synthesis of Russian Constructivism and Dutch Neo-Plasticism in the Bauhaus, where painting abandoned the artificiality of representation for technological authenticity. âIn close connection with architecture and engineering, art should endeavour to give form to life itself ⊠[The former] provided new sources of inspiration as well as new materials â steel, aluminium, glass, synthetic materials.â[7]
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 Victor VasarĂ©ly, Jean Dewasne, Mario Negro and Richard Mortensen, only came to painting after first studying science.[8] Nevertheless, all theoretical advances seek justification in past practice, and in this case the mathematical proportions expressed in abstract form are to be identified in various art forms over millennia. Thus, argued Haftmann, âthe elimination of representational images and the overt use of pure geometry do not imply a radical and definitive rejection of the great art of the past, but rather a reassertion of its eternal values stripped of their historical and social disguises.â[9]
Development

While Abstraction-CrĂ©ation was a grouping of all modernistic tendencies, there were those within it who carried the idea of mathematically inspired art and the term âconcrete artâ to other countries when they moved elsewhere. A key figure among them was JoaquĂn Torres GarcĂa, who returned to South America in 1934 and mentored artists there. Some of those went on to found the group Arte Concreto InvenciĂłn 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 ZĂŒrich 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-CrĂ©ation 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 RenĂ© Drouin during the summer of 1945. Described as "the first major post-World War 2 exhibition of abstract artâ,[14] the artists exhibited there included the older generation of abstractionists: Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay, CĂ©sar 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 RĂ©alitĂ©s Nouvelles, which included some of these artists and were devoted, according to its articles of association, to âworks 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 Sonia Delaunay and Jean Gorin and the newly emergent Jean Dewasne and Victor VasarĂ©ly. Its manifesto was published in LâArchitecture dâAujourdâhui that year and placarded on the streets of Paris, championing the fundamental presence of the plastic arts in all aspects of life for the harmonious development of all human activities. It extended beside into practical politics, having elected as its honorary president the Minister for Reconstruction and Urban Development, EugĂšne Claudius-Petit.[16]
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 Lyrical abstraction, reintroduced personality into art.[17] The former eventually fed into international movements building on technological aspects championed by the pioneers of Concrete Art, emerging as optical art, kinetic art and programmatic art.[18] The term Concrete also began to be extended to other disciplines than painting, including sculpture, photography and poetry. Justification for this was theorized in South America in the 1959 Neo-Concrete Manifesto, written by a group of artists in Rio de Janeiro who included Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape.[19]
International dimension
City | Group | Year | Artists | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Zurich | Die ZĂŒrcher Schule der Konkreten | 1944 | Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse, Camille Graeser, Verena Loewensberg, Hans Coray, Johannes Itten, Leo Leuppi, Anton Stankowski, Carlo Vivarelli, AndrĂ© Evard | |
Buenos Aires | AsociaciĂłn Arte Concreto-InvenciĂłn | 1945 | TomĂĄs Maldonado, Lidy Prati, Alfredo Hlito, RaĂșl Lozza, Enio Lommi, Manuel Espinoza, Juan MelĂ© | |
Buenos Aires | Movimento Madi | 1946 | Carmelo Arden Quin, Gyula Kosice, Rhod Rothfuss, MartĂn Blaszko, Diyi Laañ, Elizabeth Steiner, Juan Bay | |
Copenhagen | Linien II | 1947 | Ib Geertsen, Bamse Kragh-Jacobsen, Niels Macholm, Albert Mertz, Richard Winther, Helge Jacobsen | |
Milan | Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC) | 1948 | Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Gianni Monnet, Augusto Garau, Ettore Sottsass | |
Zagreb | Group Exat 51 | 1951 | Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Vlado Kristl, Aleksandar Srnec, Bernardo Bernardi | |
Paris | Group Espace | 1951 | ||
Montevideo | Grupo de Arte No Figurativo | 1952 | JosĂ© Pedro Costigliolo, MarĂa Freire, Antonio Llorens | |
Rio de Janeiro | Grupo Frente | 1952 | AluĂsio CarvĂŁo, Carlos Val, DĂ©cio Vieira, Ivan Serpa, JoĂŁo JosĂ© da Silva Costa, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Vicent Ibberson | |
SĂŁo Paulo | Grupo Ruptura | 1952 | Waldemar Cordeiro, Geraldo de Barros, Luis Sacilotto, Lothar Charroux, Kazmer Fejer, Anatol Wladslaw, Leopoldo Haar | |
Ulm | Hochschule fĂŒr Gestaltung | 1953 | ||
Cordoba | Equipo 57 | 1957 | Jorge Oteiza, Luis Aguilera, Ăngel Duarte, JosĂ© Duarte, Juan Serrano, AgustĂn Ibarrola | |
Havana | Los Diez Pintores Concretos | 1957-1961 | Pedro de OraĂĄ, LolĂł Soldevilla, SandĂș DariĂ©, Pedro Carmelo Ălvarez LĂłpez, Wifredo Arrcay Ochandarena, Salvador ZacarĂas CorratgĂ© Ferrera, Luis DarĂo MartĂnez Pedro, JosĂ© MarĂa Mijares, Rafael Soriano LĂłpez, and JosĂ© Ăngel Rosabal Fajardo | |
Padua | Gruppo N | 1959 | Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi. | |
Milan | Gruppo T | 1959 | Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gabriele De Vecchi, Gianni Colombo, Grazia Varisco | |
Paris | Motus/GRAV | 1960 | Horacio Garcia Rossi, Julio Le Parc, Francois Morellet, Francisco Sobrino, Yvaral (Jean Pierre Vasarely), JoĂ«l Stein, and at the beginning also Hugo Demarco, Francisco GarcĂa Miranda, Vera MolnĂ r, François MolnĂ r, Sergio Moyano Servanes,[20] | |
Cleveland | Anonima Group | 1960 | ||
Rome | Gruppo Uno | 1962 | Gastone Biggi, Nicola Carrino, Nato FrascĂ , Achille Pace, Pasquale Santoro, Giuseppe Uncini | |
Prague | Klub konkrĂ©tistĆŻ | 1967 | Eduard Antal, Juraj Bartusz, VĂĄclav Cigler, FrantiĆĄek Dörfl, JiĆĂ Hampl, Radoslav Kratina, FrantiĆĄek Kyncl, Jaroslav Malina, Eduard OvÄĂĄÄek, ArsĂ©n PohribnĂœ, LubomĂr PĆibyl, TomĂĄĆĄ Rajlich, VladimĂra SedlĂĄkovĂĄ, ZdenÄk Ć plĂchal, Karel Trinkewitz, JiĆĂ Valoch, Miroslav VystrÄil |
Museums
- Haus Konstruktiv museum of constructive and concrete art in Zurich, Switzerland
- Museum fĂŒr 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: konstnÀr, kritiker och utstÀllningsarrangör, 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 ColecciĂłn Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Exhibition catalog). Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute and Getty Research Institute / Getty Publications. ISBN 978-1-606-06529-7. OCLC 982373712.
Wikidata (
)
- Haftmann, Werner. Painting in the Twentieth Century , vol.1, second edition, London 1965 OCLC 32998790
- Museum am Kulturspeicher (ed.): Concrete Art in Europe after 1945 - The Peter C. Ruppert Collection. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002. ISBN 3-7757-1191-0
- PĂ©rez-Barreiro, Gabriel; Borja-Villel, Manuel (2013). Concrete Invention: ColecciĂłn Patricia Phelps De Cisneros: Reflections on Geometric Abstraction from Latin America and Its Legacy. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofĂa/Turner. ISBN 978-8-415-42797-1. OCLC 828897697.
Wikidata (
)
- Stiles, Kristine, âGeometric Abstractionâ 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 HĂ©lion, "Art Concret 1930: Four Painters and a Magazineâ, in Double Rhythm: Writings About Painting, Skyhorse Publishing 2014
- [fabstract Springer p.413-4]
- AC: Internationell utstÀllning 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 WaterâMax Billâs "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 RĂ©alitĂ©s Nouvelles : pour et contre lâart concret", p.2
- Eve Roy, âLa prĂ©sence fondamentale de la plastique, Lâexposition du Groupe Espace Ă Biot en 1954: un essai de synthĂšse des artsâ, 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 MENĂNDEZ-CONDE reviews "CONCRETE CUBA"". 2017-04-11.
External links
- Washington State University/Dr. Michael Delahoyde; commentary on Concrete art
- Monolith on the WaterâMax Billâs "Continuity" in a New Location; Deutsche Bank Art works
- Term defined by tate.org
- Kendall Art Center Three Cuban concrete abstract artists: SandĂș DariĂ©, Pedro de OraĂĄ and LolĂł Soldevilla