1919: Born in Montevideo, Uruguay

 1936: Worked in the photography department of newspaper “diario el Plata”.

1950: Opened his studio in the main avenue in Montevideo.

1954: Won First Prize at the International Photographic Art Contest in San Pablo, Brazil.   

1967: Won the highest recognition of Excellence title of the International Federation of Photographic Art based in Switzerland.

1984: Won First Prize in the arts of the IDB. 

1967: He was part of the exhibitors that opened photography in the well-knowns National and Municipal halls. Since then presented to the National Hall where he received the Acquisition Award in 1969, 1972, 1980, 1982 and 1983, and first prize at the XVI Municipal Hall in 1978.

2002: Died in Montevideo.

Carmelo Arden Quin was born in Rivera, Uruguay. From 1919 to 1930 he was educated in Marist institutions in Brazil; while a student, he became interested in Marxism. In 1930, he traveled in Argentina and Brazil. While a law student, he began to study painting in 1932 with the Catalan artist Emilio Sans. He returned to Uruguay in 1935. A meeting with Joaquin Torres-Garcia in Montevideo the following year proved decisive to his artistic career. Moving to Buenos Aires in 1938, Arden Quin studied philosophy and literature and became active in that city's avant-garde. He contributed to the cultural review Sinesis and, in 1939, with the poet Edgar Bayley and others, he attempted to found a magazine, Arturo. At that time, he became interested in "primitive" art and also developed aesthetic theories based on the concept of dialectical materialism. In 1941, while still a student, Arden Quin was a founder of the cultural and political review El Universitario, and he continued to be politically active, opposing Nazism. He traveled in 1941 to Paraguay, in 1942 to Brazil, where he met members of Rio de Janeiro's avantgarde, and in 1943 to Uruguay, where he again met with Torres-Garcia. Upon his return to Buenos Aires, Arden Quin revived the review Arturo with a new group of artists, publishing a single issue in 1944. He participated in the two Arte Concreto-Invencion exhibitions in 1945. A year later he helped found the Grupo Madí and was influential in developing its artistic philosophy. During this period, Arden Quin created abstract wood wall reliefs featuring geometric forms and, in some instances, movable parts, recalling Torres-Garcia's wood toys, which he had seen in 1939. He also produced irregularly shaped geometric paintings with areas of flat color bounded by heavy black lines, by 1947 the compositions became more complex and mechanistic. Although he broke with the Grupo Madi that year, he continued to participate in their exhibitions and promote their theories. Living in Europe from 1948 to 1952, he met Michel Seuphor, Jean (Hans) Arp, Auguste Herbin, Francis Picabia, and Nicolas de Staël, and from 1948 to 1956 he exhibited at the Salons des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris. Arden Quin traveled to Brazil in 1953 and organized in Sáo Paulo a conference on the Madí movement. In Buenos Aires in 1954 he helped found the group Asociación Arte Nuevo. In the late 1950s and 1960s he continued to exhibit in Paris and contribute to periodicals such as Ailleurs, which he directed from 1962 to 1966. His one-person exhibitions include shows at the Galerie de la Salle, Saint-Paul de Vence, 1978, and the Espace Latino-Américain, Paris, 1983. His work has been included in Vanguardias de la década del 40, Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori, Buenos Aires, 1980, and Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980, Hayward Gallery, London, 1989. Arden Quin diedin Savigny-sur-Orge, near Paris in 2010.

b. 1919, Cerro Chato, Uruguay - d. 2009, New York City

Growing up in the Uruguayan countryside with little exposure to art, Alpuy first began drawing at the age of twenty.  Within a year, the young artist met Joaquín Torres-García.  Inspired by the master's theories of universal constructivism, Alpuy joined the Taller Torres- García, and is today recognized as one of the Taller's most important members. 

In 1944, Alpuy contributed two murals as part of the Taller's project to decorate the St. Bois hospital in Uruguay; he would continue to create murals throughout his career.  Encouraged by Torres-García, Alpuy and other Taller members travelled to the Andean region of South America in 1945; this experience, along with other periods of travel during the 1950s in South America, Europe, and the Middle East profoundly affected the themes and structural composition of his art. 

In 1961, Alpuy emigrated to New York, where he remained for the duration of his life.  Alpuy's art has been featured in numerous exhibitions about the Taller Torres-García, as well as in several international one-person exhibitions.  His works are included in major international collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection, New York; and Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay.

1954 Born in Montevideo

1972 First personal exhibition held in the Civic Room in Montevideo

1979 Began working with marble and sculpted his first piece in Carrara, La Lumière

1982 Moved to Lecco when he received the commission for his first large sculpture, a Pietà, which is now the property of the city’s Basilica of San Nicolò

2002 Received the Michelangelo Award in Carrara

2003 Represented Uruguay in the 50th International Exhibition of the Visual Arts at the Venice Biennale

Padua, 1937

Alberto Biasi is one of the foremost exponents of Kinetic Art in Italy, as well as a co-founder of the Gruppo N, which included Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi and Alfredo Massironi. The optical-dynamic experiments the group realised between its creation in 1959 and dissolution in 1967 led to Biasi being exhibited alongside Enrico Castellani and the Nine Tendencije movement in Zagreb, making him one of the instigators of the movement of Arte Programmata (‘Programmed Art’).

Biasi’s first series of works, entitled Trame, was constituted of cotton gauzes, metal wires and perforated cardboard overlaid to create wefts through which light would filter in a constellation-like effect that changed in relation to the viewer.

Taking this relationship between the artwork and the spectator even further, Biasi started making his Oggetti Ottico-Dinamici in the early 1960s – thin strips of PVC radiating from a central point and twisting equidistantly towards a geometric wooden frame. As the suspended object vacillates and the spectator moves around it, the immobile strips become animated with morphing geometric shapes.

Thus the artist elaborated the concept he called ‘virtual kineticism’, and which he would explore throughout his career, particularly in his Rilievi Ottico-Dinamici, where the plastic strips are attached over a painted and later even patterned and printed surface to create ever-more intriguing works.

A great innovator, this multifaceted artist also created Ambienti (‘Environments’), immersive installations with light and colour that blur the senses, creating a feeling of visual, spatial and temporal instability for the spectator. These include works Light Prisms, an installation from 1962 with light, prisms and motors that was exhibited at the Venice Biennale two years later. Biasi’s experiments with kineticism continued after the dissolution of the Gruppo N with the Politipi – a complex extension of his optical-dynamic works comprising actual moving parts.

As well as 12 exhibitions with the Gruppo N – including ‘The Responsive Eye’ at the MoMA in New York – and numerous solo shows, Biasi’s work was presented at the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, the Rome Quadriennale and most recently in the AZIMUT/H Continuità e nuovo exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2014.

© ALBERTO BIASI, by SIAE 2022

Born in Buenos Aires, Martha Boto was drawn to art as a young child, and her family supported her studies. Between the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, she joined the first abstract art movements in Buenos Aires, including the Asociación Arte Nuevo. In 1944, she attended the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes “Ernesto de la Cárcova,” where she took classes in drawing and painting.

In the 1950s, Boto showed her work at several Buenos Aires galleries, including Van Riel and Galatea y H. She began to create structures and transparent mobiles in Plexiglas, with colored water, perhaps in dialogue with works being made around the same time by Gyula Kosice. In 1956, she (along with Gregorio Vardanega), co-founded the group Artistas No Figurativos de la Argentina.

In 1959, Boto and Vardanega moved to Paris, and she began a new phase of her career. In 1960, she participated in the first Bienal of Paris and she began to explore movement in sculpture. She developed her kinetic works during this time, adding a motor, or colored lights, to her sculptural practice, and focusing upon the effects of movement, illumination, and color; of especial interest was the ability to modify, absorb, and reflect light. To this end, she also began experimenting with different industrial materials, including aluminum and stainless steel. In 1961, she showed her works for the first time at the Denise René Gallery, in the group exhibition Art abstrait constructif international.  Art critics of the time described her works in relation to the genre of science fiction, and with the seeming magic of space travel. Her first solo exhibition at Denise René was in 1969.

Boto continued to work, making sculptures and paintings, through the early 2000s. Her works have been included in numerous important exhibitions, including most recently, Real/Virtual, Arte Cinético Argentino de los Años Sesenta, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lo[s] Cinetico[s] at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.

She died in Paris in 2004.

Uruguayan

Born in 1902 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Costigliolo studied at the “Circulo de Bellas Artes” from 1921-1925 under masters such as Vicente Puig and Guillermo Laborde. From 1929-1946, he explored graphic design, muralism, and Planism, and in 1934 Joaquín Torres García, returned to Montevideo from Europe with the most recent knowledge of the European avant-gardes. Costigliolo’s constructive art is also in dialogue with its 1917 Russian counterpart, which, under artists such as Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky, led the way to an examination of abstract elements as the picture frame, line, and color. Finally, in 1950, Costigliolo entered his Structural phase, painting oil and vinyl works that consisted of orthogonal structures free from iconic referent.

By manipulating size, direction, and color density, Costigliolo formed asymmetrical groups of elements to convey energetic compositions. In Rectángulos LXXX-65, 1965, thin bars of different sizes form angles that are densely packed together, with bold warm and cold tones playing off of one another in the infinite space. Using only an acrylic medium, Costigliolo’s constant variation on the size of elements, limited to squares, triangles, and rectangles, became progressively simpler after 1964, conveying a strict order and total concentration on the inner workings of the components.

Untitled, 1973, reveals Costigliolo’s style of enlarging or shrinking the geometric elements, taking size, shape, color, and orientation into account. The rectangles follow a slow progression that possesses a sense of vigor through their spatial relationships. His decisions were based on the six rules of grouping established by Gestalist psychologist Max Wertheimer.

Later works such as Untitled, 1983, also incorporate black shapes, a subtle reference to Malevich and El Lissitsky. The visual repetition of floating shapes accumulates to create a system of permanent rhythm in perpetual mutation, an effect enhanced by the increased space between the rectangles and attained by positioning elements in different directions. During the latter part of his career, Costigliolo’s shapes appeared to be fighting against one another. The presence of black opposes the yellow background on the right side of the work, revealing a carefully controlled use of color that generates a sense of aggressiveness between shapes and colors that are simultaneously united and in conflict.

Although he suffered from Parkinson’s disease beginning in 1978, he continued to paint until his death in 1985

Jacob El Hanani was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1947 and grew up in Israel. His work draws upon the tradition of micrography in Judaism, a technique utilized in decoration and transcribing holy texts. El Hanani creates highly intricate works through the painstaking repetition of minuscule marks, often Hebrew letters repeated thousands of times using ink on paper or canvas. The repetition represents a prayer, or Tehilim. Tehilim refers to a collection of 150 Psalms that express thanks, beseech, praise, love, and fear, for God. He draws these images without magnification; in order to reduce eye strain, he rests every ten minutes. The end result is a work of extraordinary detail that appears to be a pattern from a distance, and speaks of the passage of time and the link between the microscopic and the infinit

SÉRVULO ESMERALDO (1929-2017, Brazil/Brazil)

“Geometry describes everything that you see.”

Sculptor, engraver, draftsman, and kinetic artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo began his artistic

career in the late 1940s in northern Brazil, where he attended the open studio of the

Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas in Fortaleza. In 1951, he moved to São Paulo to

study architecture, his arrival coinciding fortuitously with the first Bienal de São Paulo.

Interested in mathematics, geometry, and physics, Esmeraldo also studied mechanics,

electricity, and optics; these studies continue to influence his artistic output.

Like many Latin American artists in the 1950s, Esmeraldo moved to Europe to continue

his studies and pursue a career; he lived in France from 1957 to 1977. While there, he

worked and lived in close contact with an expatriate Brazilian community of artists,

including Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Lygia Clark, Sérgio de Camargo, Franz Krajcberg,

Arthur Luiz Piza, Flávio-Shiró, and Rossini Peres. He took classes in printmaking at the

École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and learned metal engraving in the studio of

Johnny Friedlaender. During his first years in France, he also made weekly visits to the

National Library, where he studied prints by Albrecht Dürer. In 1959, he was invited to

participate in the fifth Bienal de São Paulo, marking the growing recognition of his work.

He simultaneously pursued commercial work designing book covers, magazine

illustrations, and record album covers.

In the early 1960s, Esmeraldo began making paintings and art objects he called Excitables,

works, which were activated by the static electricity from the viewer’s touch. “Charges run

through them,” he noted, “jumping from element to element, modifying the structure of the

composition.” Upon his return to Brazil in 1977, Esmeraldo started making public art

projects. He organized two international exhibitions of ephemeral sculptures in 1986 and

1991, in which he invited artists from around the world to send designs for sculptures, to

be completed and installed by preparators in his hometown of Ceará, Brazil. The

exhibitions were unprecedented events in the history of public art production. Throughout

Esmeraldo’s work—whether in printmaking, sculpture, or kinetic projects—a close

observation of nature underpins his constructions. He returns consistently to the idea of

line as an abstract value, and he observes, “For a question of temperament I was led to the

purity of forms, balance, constraint, in short, simplicity…”

Sérvulo Esmeraldo’s works are represented in several major collections including

Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Collections Publiques du

Gouvernement Français, Paris, France; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo, São

Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte da Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil;

Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy;

and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.

b. 1922 Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1997 Seravezza, Italy

In 1942, Fonseca quit his architectural studies in order to pursue an artistic career.  Working under the direction of Joaquín Torres-García, Fonseca joined the artist's workshop, where he participated in the group's collective exhibitions. In 1945 Fonseca traveled with other Taller Torres-García members through Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia to study pre-Columbian art.  This experience, along with numerous trips throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during the 1950s, profoundly affected Fonseca's formal and theoretical approach to art.

Although Fonseca left the College of Architecture in Montevideo as a youth, an emphasis on structure and architectonics is present throughout his oeuvre.  As a teenager, he taught himself to sculpt in stone and later returned to such sculptural practices after studying ceramics in Spain in 1953.  Fonseca moved to the United States in 1958, and later divided his time between New York and Italy, where he created large-scale marble sculptures. 

Artworks by Fonseca are included at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museo Municipale, Pietrasanta, Italy; and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, among other collections.  The artist's works are also featured in numerous public spaces around the globe, including Tokyo; Palo Alto, California; New York; Reston, Virginia; and Montevideo.

b. 1917, Montevideo, Uruguay - lives and works in Montevideo, Uruguay

María Freire is one of the Southern Cone's most productive and engaged, if also one of the least-known, artists working in the Constructivist tradition. Freire trained at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Montevideo from 1938 to 1943, studying under José Cuneo and Severino Pose and at the Universidad del Trabajo under Antonio Pose. Her first sculptures indicate the profound influence of African art on her work, something of an anomaly for an artist in South America at that time. In the early 1950s, after meeting her future husband, the artist José Pedro Costigliolo, her art became more influenced by European non-figurative art, such as Art Concret group, Georges Vantongerloo, and Max Bill. In 1952 she co-founded the Arte No-Figurativo group with Costigliolo in Montevideo, and exhibited with them in 1952 and 1953. Freire exhibited regularly in the National Salons from 1953 to 1972.  In 1953 Freire and Costigliolo were invited to the 2nd Sao Paulo Biennial, where they came into contact with Brazil's enthusiasm for geometric abstraction. In 1957 Freire and Costigliolo won the “Gallinal” travel grant which they used to live and study in Paris and Amsterdam, and to travel throughout Europe until 1960, meeting many of the historical pioneers of abstract art, including Antoine Pevsner and Georges Vantongerloo. In 1959 they exhibited in Brussels, at the Galerie Contemporain. She was invited again to the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1957 and the XXXIII Venice Biennale in 1966.

Freire developed her work within a strict, yet variable formal vocabulary, often switching between periods of greater or lesser degrees of abstraction.  Her series Sudamérica, worked on from 1958 to 1960, employed cut planes and polygonal forms in a reduced palette. Freire taught drawing in an Architecture Prep School and wrote art criticism for the journal “Acción” from 1962 to 1973.  Around 1960, she began to experiment with looser forms of abstraction, and a more expressive range of colors, resulting in her series Capricorn and Cordoba, 1965-1975, and later on she would create volumetric disturbances by dividing the surface with repeated forms or by creating chromatic modulation sequences in her series Variantes y Vibrantes, 1975-1985. In 2000, she began to produce large-scale public sculpture in Uruguay. 

b. 1927, Lithuania – d. 1974 New York City

Populated with figures and images that reflect his Jewish upbringing, his participation with the Taller Torres-García, and his profound admiration for the European art masters Breughel and Bosch, Gurvich's artworks combine a unique personal style with technical mastery. 

The child of Jewish immigrants, the artist was born in Lithuania and moved to Uruguay with his family in 1932.  There, Gurvich excelled at both music and the visual arts, and it was while studying the violin alongside Horacio Torres that the young artist was introduced to Horacio's father, Joaquín Torres-García.    Soon after, Gurvich joined the Taller Torres-García, participating in the workshop's exhibitions, writing for its publications, executing mural projects, and teaching.  Gurvich's role at the Taller later influenced the creation of his own workshop, the Taller Montevideo, where he taught the next generation of Uruguayan artists. 

In 1954 and again in 1964, the artist travelled to Europe and Israel, where he lived as a shepherd on the Ramot Menasche kibbutz.  These experiences profoundly influenced the iconography of his paintings and sculptures.  Moving to the United States in 1970, Gurvich joined his fellow Taller Torres-García artists Julio Alpuy, Horacio Torres, and Gonzalo Fonseca in New York City, where he continued to produce art until his premature death in 1974.

'Pieter de Haard (1914-2000), living in Paris during the 1940s, created an oeuvre partially based on musical rhythms translated into the visual arts. Yet his major interest was in space and infinity, which is already visible in his figurative and expressive pre-war period.

In the pastels from 1942-1944 De Haard continued researching into the representation of spatial dynamics, untill he finally settled for mathematics, it's natural ratios and the Golden Section in particular; this is not all too surprising when one takes into account that he studied mathematics and philosophy at the Academy of Munich.

The oeuvre from this 'mathematical period', which started in 1946 and constituted the height of his career, was gradually stripped bare of colour and the compositions became ever simpler. Slight hints to the spirituality of the cosmic order were given by what appeared to be linear schemes of stellar constellations or planets floating in vast blue-ish or black planes. However, the oeuvre remained in the realm of the visual language and did not mutate into a spiritual remedy, like Mondrian's rhythms.'

1923: Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1938 - 1942: Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aire.

1945: Founding-member of the Asociación Arte Concreto Invención.

Argentine sculptor. His father was a sculptor, and Iommi studied in his father's workshop and attended metalwork courses. He was a founder-member of the ASOCIACIÓN ARTE CONCRETO INVENCIÓN and is one of the most representative Constructivist sculptors in Argentina. In 1954 he created Continual Forms , a sculpture for a house in La Plata designed by Le Corbusier. His highly formal work was characterized at first by an economy of means, rigorous logic and dynamic rhythms and tensions, with an intelligible and rational structure of form that was optimistic in tone. It was with such works that he won a gold medal in Brussels at the Exposition Universelle et Internationale in 1958, took part in the exhibition Concret Art at the Kunsthaus, Zurich, in 1958, and participated hors concours in the São Paulo Biennale in 1961 and Venice Biennale in 1964.-

Nikolai Kasak (1917–1994) fits comfortably into the aesthetics of the international geometric avant-garde of the early twentieth century. An artist of Belarusian descent, Kasak began his formal training in the 1930′s in Warsaw, continuing on to Vienna, then Rome. He was originally trained in the academic style of late nineteenth century Realism, until the artist encountered abstract art for the first time in 1945. The artists of De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, and Supremetism had vast influence on Kasak, prompting him to shift his focus from a primarily figure-based aesthetic to pure abstraction. Concentration of form, formulaic compositions, and solid color shapes became the significant structural element in his painting. Upon immigrating to the United States post-World War II, Kasak had the opportunity to exchange creative ideas with other Eastern-European and Russian émigré circles, formulating and fine-tuning his artistic ideology.

Concurrently with his technical development, Kasak wrote a number of theoretical essays regarding the importance of positive and negative space in his compositions. Two major works entitled, Physical Art – Action of Positive and Negative, and From Action to Dynamic Silence: The Art of Nikolai Kasak, deal with “his preoccupation with nothingnessthe concept of void in both formal and symbolic terms. His work demonstrates the relationships between discs and squares and incorporates dichotomies between movement and light, space and matter, positive and negative antinomies.” 1

The entirety of Kasak’s approach is based on both rational and non-rational polarities, which supply a tension between the physical aspects (i.e. isolated color forms and geometric structures) and the conceptual implications of his work. In the Kasak’s own words, “the work of art is an independent and active reality in itself, that is a fully invented physical organism, and not a description, imitation, or deformation of anything.” 2

1 Myroslava Mudrak, “The Russian Review,” Vol.53, No. 3, pages 435-6.
2 Nikolai Kasak and John E. Bowlt, “From Action to Dynamic Silence: The Art of Nikolai Kasak,” Institute of Modern Russian Culture, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1991, page 15.

Born in 1924, Victor Magariños D. studied at the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts, in Buenos Aires, an institution in which he was later a lecturer. In 1946, he founded ‘Grupo Joven’ - a highly active and important force within the Latin American avant-garde. He travelled to Paris in 1951 on a grant from the French government, where he met with Georges Vantongerloo, Fernand Leger, and Max Bill. In 1964, Magariños D. was selected to be part of the 1964 Torcuato Di Tella National Institute Award – this important prize was judged by a jury composed of Clement Greenberg, Pierre Restany and Jorge Romero Brest. In 1967, he moved to Pinamar - a small, coastal town. There, he built a house and studio which became an artistic and educational hub for over twenty years, up until his death in 1993.

Significant exhibitions include; the XXVIII Venice Biennial in 1956; the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, ‘From Concrete Art to New Trends’ in 1963; The Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, ‘New Art of Argentina’ in 1964; Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, travelling to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, ‘The Emergent Decade’ in 1965; Yale University Art Gallery, travelling to University of Texas Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, La Jolla Museum of Art, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art in New Orleans, 'Pintura - Latin American Art since Independence’ in 1966; Museum of Modern Art, New York, ‘Latin-American Art 1931-1966’ in 1967; the X Sao Paulo Biennial in 1969.

The Centro de Artes Magariños D. is a non-profit museum created in 1994 by Dolores Rubio and the Friends Association of Victor Magariños D. (AAVMD). It is a meticulously preserved museum of his studio, archive and workshop. In 2000 it was declared a Historical and Cultural Heritage Site of the Pinamar Municipality and more recently, was incorporated into the Network of Creators' Houses of UNESCO, an international initiative that proposes to connect cultural spaces in Latin America.

Rafael Martínez is a Venezuelan painter and sculptor born in 1940 in San Fernando City in Apure. He began his studies at the Rafael Monasterios School of Fine Arts and the Arturo Michelina School in Valencia. In 1968 he studied art at the Vincennes Experimental University in Paris and worked as assistant to the artists Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz Diez.

In France he participated in the first presentations of the kinetic and constructivist art movements. He moved to Italy in 1972, living in Milan. Rome and Brescia, where he participated in group and solo shows. By 1977 he had returned to Venezuela, and three years later traveled to New York City to study Print Graphics at the Pratt Institute. In 1984 he returned to Venezuela, where he currently resides in the city of Valencia.

AWARDS

1964- Julio T. Arze” Painting Award, Barquisimeto, Venezuela

1965- II Art Hall Inter-University Painting Award, Central University of Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela

1971- Arturo Michelena Award, Valencia, Venezuela

1972- Venezuela Award of Sculpture XXX Art Hall "Arturo Michelena", Valencia, Venezuela

1973- Working Exchange Hall Award "Plastic Arts in Venezuela", Museum of Fine Arts, Caracas, Venezuela

1983- II Painting Award, VIII Salon of Art State Aragua, Maracay, Venezuela

2014- Arturo Michelena Order, Municipal Council of Valencia, Venezuela

2016- Armando Reveron Award, by artistic career, Caracas, Venezuela

b. 1911, Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1995, Montevideo, Uruguay

A founding member of the Taller Torres-García, Matto had studied painting as a child before meeting the atelier's founder in 1939.  Following this encounter and encouraged by the creative environment at the Taller, Matto's artistic production shifted from his early Surrealist-influenced work to paintings and sculptures with markedly orthogonal compositions; these works were often executed on humble material supports such as cardboard and found wood pieces.  At the age of 21, Matto traveled to Tierra del Fuego and acquired the first Pre-Columbian pieces of what was to become a major collection and an important influence on his art. 

 In addition to his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Matto also executed large-scale murals, major outdoor sculptural installations, and conceived an unrealized plan for an artists' community. 

 His work has been exhibited at the Sálon des Surindépendants, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands; and in Spain, Italy, Germany, Moscow, Tokyo, New York, and throughout Latin America.  Matto's monumental concrete sculptures are landmarks in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

b. 1920, Buenos Aires, Argentina - d. 1995 Montevideo, Uruguay

Antonio Llorens was a student at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Montevideo and became a member of the MADÍ group during the 1940s.  Also a founder of the Uruguayan Group of Abstract Art, his work was in numerous exhibitions of the MADÍ group including the important 1958 Parisian MADÍ International, Groupe Argentine at the Galerie Denis René; the 1961 15 Years of MADÍ Art, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Vanguardias de la década de los 40, Arte MADÍ Perceptismo, Museo Sivori, Buenos Aires in 1980; the 2001 Abstract Art From the Rio de la Plata, 1930s to 1950, Americas Society, New York and Tamayo Museum, Mexico City.

Llorens was an influential proponent of geometric and abstract art in Uruguay. He was commissioned to paint public and private murals, taught from 1962 to 1972 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Montevideo, and in 1987 was awarded the National Prize Pintura INCA in Montevideo.  Llorens work is in the prestigious Blaquier Collection, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the Cisneros Collection in Caracas, Venezuela, and the CIFO collection in Miami, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales Montevideo among others.  

b. 1918 Galicia, Spain - d. 2004 Montevideo, Uruguay

The child of Spanish immigrants, Pailós studied painting at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Montevideo before joining the Taller Torres-Garcia in 1943.  Profoundly influenced by the pedagogy and theories of the workshop's founder, Joaquín Torres-García, Pailós was an important contributing member of the Taller throughout its existence, working as both a student and eventually a teacher. 

In addition to his drawing and painting production, Pailós executed sculptures in wood, granite, and other materials, and many of his reliefs and free-standing sculptures now grace parks and plazas in Montevideo.

 Works by Pailós have been exhibited extensively throughout Latin America, and in 1991 the artist was honored by the Spanish regional government of Galicia with a museum exhibition and sculpture commission for the gardens at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

In 1923, he moved with his parents and brothers to Las Piedras (Canelones, Uruguay), where he met the painter Manuel Rosé and began his studies with him. In Secondary Education, he had as a professor in the chair of drawing, Castellanos Balparda

Between 1924 and 1925 he frequented the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Montevideo (Uruguay).

Between 1923 and 1929 he works in Las Piedras (Canelones, Uruguay) and cultivates friendship with the sculptor Germán Cabrera.

He traveled to Europe between the year 1954 to 1957. In France he attended the Ravenna School of Mosaic and Ceramics. He introduced a new technique to the Byzantine mosaic, and thus, the one who had started the courses as a student had the honor of immortalizing a new technique in France.

In association with Professor Melano, and following the sketch of the painter Fernand Lerger, he made in Normandie (Saint Lo, France) the mural of a great building, a tribute by the Americans to that city that had been destroyed during the war. This building was a hospital in whose front the Byzantine mosaic technique adapted by Pareja was applied. He made another mural in the Cocquerie de l'Úsine de Gaz in France.

On his return to Montevideo (Uruguay) he started the mosaic workshop where the pieces were made for various murals that stand in the capital as of today. In 1964, he assumed the direction of the National School of Fine Arts (Montevideo, Uruguay).

He exhibited his works in The Hague (Netherlands), Cairo (Egispto), Damascus (Syria), Dallas (USA), Sao Paulo Biennial (Brazil), Porto Alegre (Brazil), Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Paris (France ), Prague (Czech Rep.), And in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

1942: Born in Montevideo, Uruguay.

1966 : Graduated at the University of the Republic in Uruguay. He studied Economics and Administration.

During his studies he continue working and exploring different art disciplines.

1985: He was appointed president of the Central Bank of Uruguay.

During his presidency Pedro Figari Award in Visual Arts was created.

1989: Joined the Center of Plastic Arts run by Nelson Ramos.

1995: First solo show at the Alianza Cultural Uruguay-Estados Unidos, in Montevideo. 

1999: He participated in the Venice Biennale representing Uruguay.

His works are part of numerous museum and private collections in Europe, Asia, South America and North America. He also won different prizes. 

Pascale lives and work in Montevideo. 

Raúl Pavlotzky (1918 - 1998) was born in Israel, but lived, studied and created in Uruguay. He adopted Uruguayan citizenship and was an enthusiastic member of different artistic groups and endeavors.

Pavlotzky was one of the earliest concrete artists along with Carmelo Arden Quin, Rhod Rothfuss, Antonio Llorens, Rodolfo Ian Uricchio, among others. In the 1950's he was linked to the group of geometric artists whose precursors were José Pedro Costigliolo and María Freire. Later he was the co-founder of “Grupo 8,” another reference point for the vernacular avant-garde. From the 1950s through the end of the 1970s he worked on experimental art projects. His most noteworthy work was produced in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

In 1958 he was invited to represent Uruguay at the first Sao Paulo Biennial, and in 1962 he was chosen to exhibit at the first Córdoba Biennial as well.

Pavlotzky presented solo shows in Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv. As founding member of “Grupo 8″ he participated in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, at the University of Chile, and in Prague, and participated in different abstract art exhibitions in Uruguay, Israel, Brazil, United States, Poland, Sweden and Venezuela. His works are located in the collections of the Blanes Museum in Montevideo, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, the University of Dallas, the Municipal Pinacoteca of Porto Alegre, as well as in celebrated private collections.

Born in 1937 in San Felice sul Panaro, in the province of Modena, Landi graduated in Architecture in Venice, where he attended an Industrial Design Course from 1962 to 1964. In 1959, he founded Gruppo Enne (or Gruppo N) in Padua with Biasi, Chiggio, Costa and Massironi.

At an international level, he was one of the promoters of the New Tendencies international movement in 1961. In 1961, 1963 and 1969 he took part in the New Tendencies exhibitions I, II, IV in Zagreb. From 1962 to 1964, he participated in the travelling exhibition Arte Programmata (Programmed art) at the Olivetti stores in Milan, Venice, Rome, London and Paris, proving to be one of the most interesting exponents of Italian "cinematographic and programmed art". In 1963, he took part in the 4th Biennale International Art Exhibition in San Marino with Gruppo Enne, where the group received the first prize. In the same year, the first Gruppo Enne exhibition was held at Studio F in Ulm.

Landi’s work focuses mainly on the phenomenal perception of reality in its simplest structures, which are essentially geometric: through the use of elementary geometric shapes, it tends to cause perceptual stimulation in the viewer. He is particularly interested in the relationship between light and colour, and in the close connection between painting, sculpture and architecture, which also motivates his commitment in the field of graphic design and industrial design.

In 1960, Landi began to create his "visual structures" painted in acrylic, or made of woven and carved cardboard, or with elastic threads on wooden frames, and then progressively experimented with various materials such as polyethylene, plexiglass and metal meshes, which allowed him to reproduce, as Umberto Apollonio wrote, "light or chromatic refraction events in which instability is not randomly caused by external agents, but is produced by rigorous programming". He continued his research in this direction in the field of perception, by examining the mechanism of the perception of colour, virtual motion and multidimensional space more in depth through the analysis of impossible imagery or with multiple perspectives, until the recent "virtual cubes" and "hypercubes".

Manifesto of the transactional criterion in the visual arts

In 1966 Ermanno Leinardi together with Tonino Casula, Ugo Ugo and Italo Utzeri founded the Transactional Group.

“We wanted to detach ourselves from the Gestaltists, who did optical, who followed arithmetic or mathematical rules. The artifact lost its humanity, became icy. " Ermanno Leinardi interviewed by Patrizia Veroli.

"A painting is the product of various transactions that make the artist proceed during his experience. A transactional work is a work in progress. It has in itself the possibility of bringing other works to life. Ultimately it is not a closed work but it is a work open to innovations and new experiences. If we are faithful to this behavior in the time that passes in an ever faster way, depending on our age, the works that will testify of our work, will be like the chapters of a book in which traces of our work remain. It is on the canvas that we will find colors, signs and all those parameters that have determined our "style" ". Ermanno Leinardi extracted from a text of the Trier lectures.

The Manifesto of the “Transactional Criterion in the arts of vision” is presented for the first time in March in Cagliari in the Friends of the Book Gallery , by Corrado Maltese. In September, the Manifesto of the Transactional Group is read by Casula as part of the XV International Conference of Critical Artists and Art Scholars held in Rimini, Vernucchio, San Marino, Cattolica and Ferrara.

Here is the original version of the Transactional Manifesto.

“While aware of the precariousness of the hypotheses, we propose a dynamic vision of reality, committing ourselves to express, with an experimental method, the incessant flow of provisional truths from continuous dialectical clashes of reason, unconscious impulses, environmental components of all kinds, which transact, advancing unrepeatable and never definitive solutions among the many possible. Our commitment is fulfilled through the unfolding of two characters of our figural process: the experimental institutionalization of basic forms and their consequent varied repetition of a transactional nature, through seriality. In both we consider implicit the rejection of randomness in choice, of mechanism (and therefore of a priori) as well as of automatism, which would deprive the dialectical process of one of its two indispensable poles. The simultaneous presentation of several variously repeated tests allows a one-to-one verification, with respect to the becoming of reality, through the transactional criterion applied to the arts of vision. Cagliari March one thousand nine hundred and sixty-six. Tonino Casula - Ermanno Leinardi”

Ugo Ugo - Itali Utzeri.

1960: Werthein Grand Prize in painting, awarded by the Van Riel Gallery of Buenos Aires.

Museums and Collections: Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Uruguay; Museo Municipal Juan Manuel Blanes; Museo del Palacio Legislativo; N.A.S.A. Collection, Washington D.C.; Museum of contemporary Latin american Art, Washington D.C.; Modern Arts Museum of Asunción, Paraguay; Modern Arts Museum of Florianoópolis, Brazil; Centro de Artes y Letras, Montevideo;George Washington University; Malcom Forbes Collection, New York; Austin university, Texas; Braniff Collection, Dallas; Georgetown University; Collection of the Uruguayan Presidency; B.I.D. Collection, Washington D.C.; Modern Arts Museum of Viena, Austria; Edward Kennedy Collection

1925: Born in Argentina.

Graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredon in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

1950: She exhibited with Carmelo Arden Quin, Martin Blaszko, Gregorio Vardanega, Virgilio Villalba, etc. 

1956: Was awarded a grant by the French government to study in Paris.

1970: Experimented with computer-generated drawings and video art. 

FRANCISCO SOBRINO

b. 1932, Guadalajara, Spain d. May 11, 2014, Paris, France

COLLECTIONS

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA

Beacon Collection, Boston, MA, USA

Centre National d’Art Plastique, Paris, France

Colección del Parlamento Provincial, Guadalajara, Spain

Fondazione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, Italy

Francisco Sobrino Museum, Guadalajara, Spain

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, USA

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Cholet, France

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bilbao, Spain

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Villafanes, Spain

Museo de Arte Moderno, Alicante, Spain

Museo de Arte Moderno - Fundación Jesús Soto, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela

Museo de la Escultura Monumental al Aire Libre, Madrid, Spain

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX, USA

Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Tate Gallery, London, UK

Tel Aviv Museum, Israel

Henryk Stazewski born 1894 [- 1988]

Polish abstract painter and maker of reliefs, born in Warsaw. Studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts 1913-20, and was afterwards strongly influenced by Cubism. Participated in the New Art exhibition in Vilno in 1923 organised by Strzeminski and Kajruksztis, and joined the Blok group of Cubists, Suprematists and Constructivists that resulted. Editor-in-chief of the first five issues of the periodical Blok 1924. From 1926 adopted an abstract style influenced by Dutch Neo-Plasticism and Russian Constructivism. Spent much of the period 1929-34 in Paris, where he took an active part in the groups Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création with Arp, Mondrian, Vantongerloo and others; also helped to collect works by avant-garde artists to establish a new museum of abstract art at Lodz. First one-man exhibition with Karol Krynski at the Instytut Propagandy Sztuki, Warsaw, 1933. Was unable to paint during the German Occupation 1939-45, and all but a few of his early works were destroyed. After the war painted figurative compositions and nudes, then in 1955 turned again to a geometrical abstract style. Began to make reliefs in 1957, at first mainly in white, or black and white, then from 1967 in colour, many of them with movable parts. Lives in Warsaw.

Published in:

Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.704-5

1923: Born in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.

1942: Recipient, scholarship from the Guyana regional authority to study at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas, Venezuela.

1947: Appointed director of the School of Art in the small town of Maracaibo, Venezuela.

!950: Embarked from the port of La Guaira on an Italian cargo ship bound for Europe and immediately took a train to Paris, France.

1951: Attended lectures by Léon Degand entitled From Figuration to Abstraction at the Atelier d' Art Abstrait, Paris, France.

1960: Recipient, Venezuelan National Painting Award.

1968: Recipient, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et de Lettres, France.

1972: Recipient, Orden Andrés Bello en Primer Grado, Caracas, Venezuela.

1973: Opening of Jesús Soto Museum of Modern Art in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela.

1999: Recipient, Doctor Honoris Causa de la Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela

b. 1913 Tarrasa, Spain - d. 1992 Barcelona, Spain

The eldest son of Joaquín Torres-García, Augusto was an active participant in his father's artistic life.  Growing up primarily in Italy and France, the young artist met many of the great figures of twentieth century art, including Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Joan Miró.  During the 1930s, while living in Paris with his family, Augusto was the apprentice of the sculptor Julio González and studied drawing in Amedée Ozenfant’s academy.  Introduced to North African and American Indian art by the painter Jean Hélion, it was also in Paris that the artist developed his lifelong passion for tribal and primitive art. 

After Torres-García brought his family to Uruguay in 1934, Augusto participated in all the activities of his father’s teaching atelier, the Taller Torres-García.  One of the Taller's most well known students, Augusto later went on become a teacher himself, instructing subsequent generations of artists.  Throughout his life, Augusto traveled widely, including two years living in New York. From 1973 on, he divided his time between Barcelona and Montevideo.

The art of Augusto has been displayed internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and his work is included in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Miró Foundation, Barcelona; and the Museo Torres-García, Montevideo.

1874: Born in Montevideo, Uruguay.

1891: Moved to his father homeland Catalonia, Spain.

1892: Moved to Barcelona. Attended the Academia de Bellas Artes and after that he enrolled in the Academia Baixas. Frequented the artist café: Els Quatre Gats where he met Pablo Picasso and other artists.

!903 - 1907: He collaborated with Antoni Gaudí on the Templo expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia and the Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca.

1918: Started designing wood toys.

1920: Moved to NY.

1926: Settled in Paris and started to experiment with Constructivism.

1929: First constructivist works. Met Piet Mondrian and Michel Seuphor they created the movement Cercle et Carré.

1930: Left the group.

1934: Returned to Uruguay. He founded Asociación de Arte Constructivo.

Gregorio Vardánega (Passagno, Italy, 1923 - Paris, France, 2007)

He was born on March 21, 1923, in Passagno, Treviso, Italy. His family settled in Argentina when he was a little child. He began his artistic studies at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1939, where he graduated as a Drawing Professor in 1946.

In 1946 he took part in the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención and participated in several of its exhibitions.

Two years later he traveled to Europe with Carmelo Arden Quin and had an exhibition at the Salon d’ Amérique Latine, Paris, in 1949, where he met Michel Seuphor, Georges Vantongerloo, Antoine Pevsner, Sonia Delaunay, Max Bill, and other important abstract artists.

He returned to Argentina in 1950 where his works were exhibited in Joven pintura (Young Painting), at the Peuser gallery.

In his early works he used glass and Plexiglas, and from flat geometric forms he drifted to the investigation of hemispheres. Later, his interest in the kinetic search took him to devise movable mechanisms and, towards the 60s, his Plexiglas spheres showed the peculiarity of containing other smaller spheres or receiving projections of colored lights. Departing from a few and simple elements, Vardanega managed to create manifold variations with games of light and movement.

He was one of the charter members of the Asociación Arte Nuevo (New Art Association) and the Artistas no Figurativos Argentinos (Argentine Non-Figurative Artists, ANFA) group. In 1957 his works were included in the Argentine representation to the IV Biennial International Exhibition of San Pablo and he participated in the International Exhibition of Brussels the following year, where he was awarded a Gold Medal.

By 1959 he decided to settle in Paris, where his works were regularly exhibited at the Salon France-Amérique (1959); Realités Nouvelles (1961); Structures, at the Galerie Denise René (1961); Trente Argentins de la Nouvelle Génération, at the Galerie Creuze (1962); Art d'Amérique Latine, at the Musée d'Art Moderne (1962); Esquisse d'un Salon, at the Galerie Denise René (1963); Art Argentin Actuel, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1964); Structure et mouvement, at the Galerie Denise René (1966); and at the Biennale de Paris (1967), hosted by the Musée d'Art Moderne, among other important exhibitions.

He also participated in Nouvelles Tendences, Zagreb and Venice (1963); Mouvement, Zurich (1964); Kinetik II, Düsseldorf (1964); Lumière, mouvement et optique, Brussels (1965); Instituto Di Tella, Buenos Aires (1966); La luce, Rome (1967); and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (1968).

Among his most relevant exhibitions, he took part in Grands et jeunes d'aujourd' hui, Grand Palais, Paris (1978-82); Argentina, Arte Concreto Invención 1945. Grupo Madí 1946 (Argentina, Concrete Art-Invention 1945, Madí Group 1946), at the Rachel Adler Gallery, New York, 1990; Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993); and in the Abstract Art from the Rio de la Plata, Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933/53 exhibition, at The Americas Society of New York (2001).