Carmelo Arden Quin (1913–2010) was known for his role as a cofounder of the Madí movement in Argentina. His innovative art and writings articulated many of the aesthetic and political concerns of the post-war Argentine avant-garde.
The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is delighted to announce the opening of “From Surface to Space”: Max Bill and Concrete Sculpture in Buenos Aires, curated by Francesca Ferrari. The first in a new series on Latin American modernism at ISLAA, this exhibition explores concurrent experiments in concrete sculpture amid the formative, transnational creative dialogue between the Swiss artist Max Bill and the Argentine avant-garde from 1946 to 1955. It is conceived as a complementary exhibition to max bill global, curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer with assistance from Myriam Dössegger, at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland.
“From Surface to Space” brings together sculptures by Carmelo Arden Quin (Uruguayan, 1913–2010), Max Bill (Swiss, 1908–1994), Claudio Girola (Argentine, 1923–1994), Enio Iommi (Argentine, 1926–2013), and Gyula Kosice (Argentine, 1924–2016), as well as a series of drawings by Lidy Prati (Argentine, 1921–2008). As members of the groups Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) and Madí, the Buenos Aires–based artists Arden Quin, Girola, Iommi, Kosice, and Prati circulated, revised, and expanded Bill’s notions of concretism in Latin America. This exhibition frames Bill’s relationship to his Argentine peers as one of reciprocal impact, revealing how artists in Argentina reacted to Bill’s theories while Bill reoriented his characterization of concrete art after encountering their work.
Taking its title from a 1951 essay in which Bill examines how artworks relate to the spaces they inhabit, the show highlights these artists’ shared aspirations to shape objects that activate their surroundings, using abstraction as a tool for animating environments. Focusing on sculpture, a medium that is less often centered in discussions of the Argentine avant-garde—which tend to privilege marcos recortados, or paintings with “broken frames”—this exhibition examines the role of sculpture in advancing artists’ determination to energize three-dimensional space. Despite their diversity of ideologies and approaches, the featured artists were united by a common, revolutionary goal: to invoke visual, tactile, and synesthetic responses in the viewer.
“From Surface to Space”: Max Bill and Concrete Sculpture in Buenos Aires is accompanied by an original publication including an essay by curator Francesca Ferrari. Physical copies are available free of charge at ISLAA and for download online.
ISLAA is open from 2 to 5 PM on Tuesday and from 2 to 7 PM on Wednesday through Friday. Proof of vaccination is required in line with New York City regulations. Guests must wear masks and adhere to all COVID-19 guidelines while on-site. Although walk-ins are allowed, visitors are encouraged to book appointments in advance through ISLAA’s online scheduler.
EXHIBITION TALKS
In conjunction with the exhibition, ISLAA is pleased to present a series of live online public programs and pre-recorded lectures that will examine Bill’s broader legacy in Latin America and provide further insight into the featured artists’ work. Co-organized with the Zentrum Paul Klee, the panel International Dialogues in Experimental Design on October 14 will explore the development of European and Latin American experimental design and pedagogical strategies inspired by the Bauhaus. A second panel on October 21 will be presented as part of the Latin American Forum at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, a platform proudly sponsored by ISLAA since 2013. This event, titled Recasting Concretism, will consider Bill’s work in relation to concrete art in Argentina and Brazil. Alongside these live presentations, ISLAA will also publish two recorded video lectures by scholars María José Herrera and María Cristina Rossi on the work of Enio Iommi and Claudio Girola, respectively.
About The Artist(s)
Carmelo Arden Quin
Max Bill
Max Bill (1908–1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer, and graphic designer. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith from 1924 to 1927, Bill took up studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau under many teachers, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer. As a designer and artist, he sought to create objects that visually represented the new science of form in the early twentieth century.
Enio Iommi
Enio Iommi (b. 1926–2013) was trained as a sculptor by his father, the Italian sculptor Santiago Girola. In 1945 he made his first sculptures, and a year later he became a member of the group Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI). In 1968, invited by the Italian government, he traveled to Italy, Switzerland, France, England, and the United States. In 1973 he was invited by the Ministry of Foreign Relations and Culture to travel to Mexico, the United States, and Canada, where he had shows in Ottawa and Québec. In 1975, he was named a member in number to the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. He lived and worked in Buenos Aires.
Gyula Kosice
Gyula Kosice (b. 1924, Slovakia; d. 2016, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine writer, plastic artist, theoretician, and poet. Along with Carmelo Arden Quin, he founded the Madí movement and wrote the “Madí Manifest” in 1946. Later on he also participated in the abstract-only Arte Concreto-Invención movement. In 1946, he created luminance structures with neon gas, used for the first time in the worldwide plane. In 1949, he also became the innovator behind the hydraulic sculpture, and he uses the water as an essential element in his works. He also had the retrospective exhibition A Hundred Works of Kosice, a Forerunner at the Di Tella Institute (1968) and a retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts (1991) in Buenos Aires. His works appear in museums and private collections in Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Lidy Prati
Lidia "Lidy" Elena Prati (1921–2008) was an Argentine artist who was known for her abstract, geometric paintings. Her artwork called into question representational art and was influential in defining the concrete art movement in Latin America. Prati contributed to the publication of Arturo magazine and, during the 1940s, was one of the founding members of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI) along with Enio Iommi and Tomás Maldonado. While she is primarily known for her concrete paintings, Prati also worked in graphic and layout design as well as with textiles and jewelry.
About The Curator(s)
Francesca Ferrari
Francesca Ferrari is a PhD candidate at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she is a recipient of the Robert Lehman Fellowship for Studies in the Fine Arts. She holds an MA in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in art history and English from the Université de Lausanne. Her research focuses on twentieth-century European and Latin American art. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Animated Geometries: Abstraction and the Body in the Work of Paul Klee, Sophie Taeuber, Joaquín Torres-García, and Alexandra Exter,” explores the convergence of geometric abstraction, the human body, and movement on a transnational scale during the 1920s. She has published in several graduate art history journals as well as in Afterimage and the Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin. Ferrari is the 2020/2021 Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.
In The News
Exhibition Material(s)
Exhibition Film
Exhibition Artworks
Virtual Exhibition Tour by Francesca Ferrari
María Cristina Rossi on Claudio Girola
María José Herrera on Enio Iommi
International Dialogues in Experimental Design
Latin American Forum—Recasting Concretism: New Looks at Max Bill in Latin America
