After World War II, Uruguay had established an industrial base to replace the imports that had been suspended during the conflict. In this context, the social and cultural power of the country’s middle classes expanded.

In the realm of painting, the rise of abstraction was apparent, though realism maintained its presence in diverse forms, and the Taller Torres-García, despite its waning influence, still held significant pedagogical and doctrinal weight. During this period, debates between “realist” and “abstract” painters continued, but their prominence faded in the 1960s.

The existential angst of the modern subject, as proposed by Sartre’s philosophy, propagated a worldview that resonated with the disconcerting circumstances of the urban middle class—a demographic that encompassed most artists of the era—who were at the forefront of escalating social and political crises. For this generation of artists, diverse in age and with different artistic trajectories, referencing Sartre’s Being and Nothingness during their informal café gatherings was commonplace. They lived in a time marked by uncertainty, where the pacifist optimism that flourished in the initial years following the war was crumbling. An art critic said: “Today’s man is not free from anxieties and fears; once again, his greatest enemy is its own kind. The artist reveals… the potential for existence by reclaiming past demises, through the revival of forms that lie beyond our customary visual world.” 1 

Informalism: Adopting a Model and Adapting It to a Local Context

The aesthetic of Informalism—or the “Other Art” 9 —contrasted with straightforward figuration, with the richness of form, with structure and geometry, and thus seamlessly aligned with the epochal sentiment previously described for the Uruguayan case. This subjective magma (a leitmotif of Informalism), which resonated with the existentialist tone of the period, departed from the invasive forms of the language of mass media through a cryptic and individualistic aesthetic. This allowed the artists a visibility on the contemporary world stage, and it also facilitated the expansion of art field agents—such as awards, galleries, and publications. At the historical juncture of 1960, the “Informalist moment” fostered an attitude of inquiry and dissolution, characterized by deep existentialism and psychologism, where all aesthetic doctrines appeared to disintegrate.

Uruguayan art critic María Luisa Torrens stated: “Informalism is not just a mere game of searching for novel means of expression. The significant shift in medium carries a deeper, philosophical, and metaphysical meaning… The break from tradition became possible only after the calamities of the last war eroded established values, granting artists absolute freedom to embark on uncharted creative voyages… America, on the verge of transitioning from the role of a passive observer to that of a leading actor, has found in the language of Informalism a means to reflect this unfolding drama.” 10 

Montevideo and Buenos Aires both boasted cultural environments that were conducive to these new trends, which indeed surfaced simultaneously on both banks of the Río de la Plata in the late 1950s.

Before 1961, Informalist art practices in Uruguay operated through decided strokes with the brush or the palette knife combined with liquid stains. Such was the case of the work produced in 1958 by Raúl Pavlotzky (Haifa, Palestine, 1918–Montevideo, 1998), who employed brushes or scrapers, or simply dripped paint, to create compositions atop juxtaposed layers of paint (fig. 1). Driven by work demands, he had embraced the silk screen technique since the late 1940s. This method allowed him to experiment with the juxtaposition of colors and shapes, all while maintaining precise control over his visual effects. Around the same time, poet and painter Julio Verdié (Montevideo, 1900–1988) created paintings with vibrant color choices. He used emulsified enamel, so the movements made by the stroke resulted in random shapes (fig. 2). Washington Barcala (Montevideo 1920–1993) created a series of tempera paintings which he called Chatarras (Junk), in which he blended precise strokes with free-form splashes (fig. 3). The series’ title is evocative, reflecting a period when numerous sculptors started to appreciate metal scraps as a valuable raw material.

José Cuneo Perinetti (Montevideo, 1887–Bonn, Germany, 1977) presents a peculiar case. As a pioneering figure of Planista painting since 1918, he played a pivotal role in 20th-century Uruguayan art, renowned for his Ranchos (Ranches) and Lunas (Moons) series, which depict rural landscapes during the 1930s and 1940s (figs. 4–5). In 1957, he began to experiment with an abstract style that diverged from his earlier figurative work, a shift that resulted in pieces that were devoid of the foreign influences mentioned earlier.

Lino Dinetto (b. Este, Italy, 1927), who arrived in Uruguay in 1951, also produced highly idiosyncratic Informalist works. Although his paintings originated from a figurative blueprint, he concluded his works with a complex array of stains, featuring a pronounced impasto that added texture to the canvas (fig. 6). Dinetto also developed an important career as a professor in Uruguay, influencing all the artists of the Informalist cycle. Among those he influenced were Hilda López (Montevideo, 1922–1996), who created monochromatic paintings in black or white from 1960 to 1963; and painters Juan Ventayol (Montevideo, 1915–1971) and Jorge Páez Vilaró (Montevideo, 1922–1994) whose work will be discussed later.

Matter Informalism

By 1960, and even more pronounced in 1961, without overshadowing previous artistic endeavors, a distinct Informalist trend surfaced, reveling in the tectonic and the textures generated by materials mixed into the painting. Consequently, the sensory and tactile qualities took precedence over those related to color, which settled into a palette of grays and earth tones, accented with subtle light effects, all within a generally dark ambiance. This painting was marked by a dual nature: on the one hand, it displayed an explicit fascination with the surface relief and the texture of materials; on the other, it tacitly referenced the hidden world of the unconscious and mysticism.

The trajectory of this Matter Informalism in Uruguay can be segmented into two phases: 1961–63, and 1963–65. During the initial moment, the art is devoid of any figurative elements, with no objects integrated into the paintings. In the latter phase, however, the works begin to suggest the outlines of spectral human figures through anthropomorphic alterations, and some pieces incorporate materials such as fabrics, metal sheets, or fragments of everyday objects.

For their contributions to this trend starting from 1961, the works of the following artists deserve special mention: Agustín Alamán (Aragón, Spain, 1921–1995), Américo Spósito (Montevideo, 1924–2005), Juan Ventayol, Raúl Pavlotzky, and Jorge Páez Vilaró.

Agustín Alamán, who arrived in Uruguay in 1955, had been a Republican fighter in the Spanish Civil War before being imprisoned in France. In Montevideo, he worked as a bricklayer, an experience that might have influenced his fascination with the tectonic relief of materials.

In fact, the initial paintings in this series feature reliefs that echo ornamental motifs found on walls and architectural façades. At the same time, they highlight the enigma of the impressions through a system of dots and lines organized with bilateral symmetry, resembling a keyboard spread across the surface (figs. 7–8).

In 1961, art critic María Luisa Torrens associated the drama of the war and Informalist art, highlighting Alamán’s paintings in particular. She said: “If, among all the local Informalist artists, Alamán has reached the highest dramatic heights, this is because he is European, and has experienced firsthand the Spanish Civil War, and then the concentration camps, like Alberto Burri.” 11  According to this art critic, who studied under Jorge Romero Brest, the participation of Jean Fautrier in both world wars, alongside Burri’s experience in World War II and Alamán’s in the Spanish Civil War, seemed to delineate the historical conditions for the origins of Informalism. The initial attempts at this art trend were, according to her: “The first Uruguayan version of the aesthetic tendency founded in Europe by Fautrier, Burri, and Tàpies.” 12 

In Diálogo XIX (Dialogue 19), the work for which Alamán received a Premio Adquisición at the XVI Salón Municipal de Artes Plásticas, in 1962, the artist displays a semiotic system over the surface as though it was a mural ruin, with scattered archaic writings (fig. 9). Soon after, he led the way in introducing anthropomorphic silhouettes with a residual appearance. This trend caught on among painters and draughtsmen in the mid-1960s, becoming known by various names such as Monstruismo, Dibujazo, and Nueva Figuración (fig. 10).

In turn, Américo Spósito’s holistic approach to art was a reflection of his mystical cosmology, which subsequently inspired his religious practices and preaching. The Sauces series (Willows, 1961) features tonal variations from gray to black, highlighted by subtle glows arising from textures that incorporate fragments of vegetal carbon (fig. 11). This mournful and enigmatic landscape aligns with the theological imagination of a painter who, in the 1940s, was part of the Taller Torres-García, and a close disciple of the master himself.

Juan Ventayol was another artist who started his career in Informalism, to which he was drawn in his pursuit of transcendental symbolism. He created textures over which he occasionally drew ambivalent signs carrying mystical and religious overtones (fig. 12).

In some ways, Informalist painting also harbored a rebellious element, transcending the boundaries of introspection and challenging the bourgeois habitus of its time. This irreverent attitude critically questioned established social and cultural conventions. A prime example of this dissident aesthetic was Argentine artist Kenneth Kemble, who incorporated raw fabrics, cardboard, sheet metals, and wood into his paintings. In 1961, he was the leading advocate for the Arte destructivo group exhibition in Buenos Aires. In September of the same year, Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies’s exhibition opened in Montevideo. Critics at the time displayed a hint of irony regarding the use of discarded materials in his paintings: “He too is captivated by the allure of patinas and the picturesque novelty of corroded and eroded materials. These elements provide a facile and immediate allusion to the passage of time, imbued with a certain historical prestige.” 13 

Among Informalist Uruguayan artists, Raúl Pavlotzky was the first to explore assemblages similar to those of Kenneth Kemble. After visiting the 1963 retrospective on the Argentine artist at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, Pavlotzky set out to embed scrap metal and remnants of various objects into the pictorial surface (fig. 13). However, unlike Kemble, Pavlotzky does not aim to provoke. Instead, he seeks to innovate the visual resources without transgressing traditional pictorial aesthetics.

The painter Jorge Páez Vilaró found appealing local influences in the Italian Lino Dinetto and the German Hans Platschek (Berlin, 1923–Hamburg, 2000. He lived in Montevideo between 1939 and 1953), who complemented the knowledge of European artists he had gained with his travels abroad. He developed a lasting friendship with Platschek, and visited his workshop in Berlin in 1959. At that time, Platschek was deeply engaged in a radical form of Informalismo and maintained personal connections with former members of the CoBrA group. Beginning in 1948, Páez’s frequent trips to Europe enabled him to come into direct contact with the most updated forms of postwar art. He met and befriended Karel Appel, became acquainted with Antonio Saura, Pablo Picasso, and Alberto Giacometti, and amassed a significant collection of twentieth-century European paintings. His initial forays into Matter Informalism began in 1961 with a series inspired by the pre-Hispanic Chancay culture, which flourished between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries in what is now Peru.

Páez was particularly interested in these Indigenous artifacts—he endeavored to infuse his paintings with the contemporary character of Informalism, while subtly incorporating elements of a regional style that echoed the pre-Hispanic history of the continent. His work thus seemed to engage in the debates surrounding Latin American identity and cultural diversity that were prominent in the 1960s (figs. 14–15). In Cuchimilco, Páez employs a series of codes to “translate” the visual motifs of a ritual ceramic object characteristic of the Chancay culture into the language of Informalist painting. Similarly, Presencias Ch Cd2 (Ch Cd2 Presences) presents veiled allusions to pre-Incaic funeral textiles (fig. 16).

During an exhibition at the Pizarro Gallery in Buenos Aires in June 1961, Páez befriended the Argentine artists who had established the Nueva Figuración movement (a group that included Ernesto Deira, Rómulo Macció, Luis Felipe Noé, Jorge de la Vega, and Miguel Dávila). The encounter influenced the gradual evolution of his painting starting in the mid-1960s, when he began to depict the human figure in an expressionist style (fig. 17).

By 1960, the interest in Informalism had become so widespread that it even appeared in the works of artists who had been—and would continue to be, after this fleeting experience—sustained proponents of geometric abstraction, particularly within the concrete art movement. Such is the case of José Pedro Costigliolo (Montevideo, 1902–1985) who, in the brief time in which he interrupted his geometric obsessions, produced Informalist paintings (fig. 18). It was also the case of his partner, painter María Freire (Montevideo, 1917–2015), who had a similar trajectory.

The aesthetic that emphasized the visual impact of materials such as stone derivatives or metal scrap was not exclusive to Informalist painting. It can also be found in contemporary photography, volumetric sculpture, and wall reliefs during the same period. Photographer Alfredo Testoni (Montevideo, 1919–2003) anticipated, within his medium, trends that would later become prominent in painting. Between 1955 and 1959, he produced photographs of walls in Europe and the Middle East, which were the origin of a series entitled Muromagorías (fig. 19). Although by 1953 Manolo Millares had already made his painting series Muros (Walls) in Spain, the singularity of Testoni’s photography consisted in combining specific parameters of light and framing in the recording of plaster holes, reliefs, cracks and various elements on the surface of ancient walls. His work was a powerful influence for Uruguayan abstract artists, leading to his inclusion in 1959 into the “pintores de avanzada,” a collective gathered around Grupo 8, which included figures such as Oscar García Reino (Montevideo, 1917–1993), Julio Verdié, Carlos Páez Vilaró (Montevideo, 1923–Punta Ballena, Uruguay 2014), Raúl Pavlotzky, Américo Spósito, Lincoln Presno (Montevideo, 1917–1991) and Miguel Ángel Pareja (Montevideo, 1908–1984).

On the other hand, the sculptor Germán Cabrera (Montevideo, 1903–1990) initiated his Hierros (Irons) series in 1959. By 1962, his sculptures made from metal scraps had gained unprecedented scale and significance. In these works, he skillfully combined mechanical elements with anthropomorphic forms. A notable example is Máquina de bañar al ángel (Angel-Bathing Machine, fig. 20), which stood out in the open-air sculpture contest organized by the Instituto General Eléctrico de Montevideo in 1963.

Matter Informalism was also evident in reliefs crafted on wall surfaces using the local adaptation of the Byzantine mosaic technique. These mosaics utilized basaltic and marble stones of various colors and sizes. It was the painter Miguel Ángel Pareja who introduced this technique in 1960, having experimented with it in France from 1954 to 1956 (fig. 21).

However, the most notable mural focusing on material was created by Leopoldo Nóvoa (Pontevedra, Spain, 1919–Paris, 2012). Having settled in Uruguay in 1943, Nóvoa produced this mural between 1962 and 1964 at the Cerro de Montevideo stadium. The work covers 600 square meters of the stadium’s exterior circular wall, incorporating stones and metal scrap (fig. 22). In a self-referential gesture of sorts, Matter Informalism here appears to have erected a monument to itself, transforming into a visual landscape on an urban scale.