The Adaptive Principles of Brazilian Geometric Art

SÃO PAULO — Geometric abstraction occupies such a prominent place in the history of Brazilian modern and contemporary art that I was surprised to hear that the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) originally collected figuration more heavily. Now, however, MASP has not only opened a new annex as of March, it’s also actively filling gaps in its holdings of abstract art and showing them to the public. 

Geometries, one of Five Essays on MASP, a series of exhibitions drawn from the museum’s permanent collection to inaugurate the opening of its new building, is but a sampling. But this elegantly hung exhibition, spanning the 1950s to the present, highlights the vigor of geometric art in Latin America and, to some extent, the United States, particularly Brazil’s Constructivist, Concrete, Neo-Concrete, and contemporary art movements.

The intimate nature of the show — 62 pieces occupy a single floor — brings out the interconnectedness of these movements. In 1959, Brazilian artists including Ferreira Gullar, Lygia Clark, Amilcar de Castro, and Franz Weissmann signed the Neo-Concrete Manifesto, hailing Kazimir Malevich’s “pure sensibility of art” and calling for a break from rationality in favor of expressivity and phenomenology. In reality, the transition from Concrete Art, which emphasizes geometrical abstraction, was more fluid. De Castro, for instance, showed in both the 1959 Neo-Concrete exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and the 1960 Concrete exhibition in Zurich. And while one can certainly sense the rationality of the geometric synthesis of de Castro’s works in steel, such as “Untitled” (1996), his way of cutting and folding forms, making the material appear pliable, nearly breathing, is undeniably expressive. Empty spaces create lightness and rhythm, suggesting a temporal unfolding. 

The works of other artists on view similarly walk the line between the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements. Weissmann’s “Three Articulated Blades” (1980s), two red-painted L-shapes laid on their sides, creates a sense of geometry gone astray. And Clark’s metal Critters (1960–64), one of which is also featured, convey a similar tactile sensibility.

Concrete and Neo-Concrete art also impacted other movements and media. For instance, they influenced the rapidly developing Brazilian modern photography, with artists taking to the streets to capture the prosaic, urban geometry of the everyday. At MASP, Gertrudes Altschul’s “Architecture or Triangle or Composition” (c. 1950s) and Geraldo de Barros’s “Frame 2 or Photoform no. 13” (c. 1949) both translate São Paulo’s chaotic modern construction and intense industrialization into rhythmic geometric compositions.

Simultaneously, in painting, Ione Saldanha, Judith Lauand, and Tomie Ohtake — three remarkable women artists — experimented with color, at times beyond the canvas. Lauand’s “Collection 29, Concrete 33” (1956), though Constructivist in its use of geometric forms (in this case circles), is nevertheless far from rigid — its interplay of green and red slots cut out from wooden chipboard recalls the playfulness of a board game. In Ohtake’s “Composition” (1978), the deceivingly simple composition of red and black paint throws off one’s sense of foreground and background, the forms neither quite geometric nor entirely organic, luxuriously folding onto each other. 

Looking at Ohtake’s work, I was reminded of a quote from Rodrigo de Castro’s essay, “Amilcar de Castro and the Line” (2014), in which the artist calls a line “a structure of sensibility.” This sense of a line as structured and foreclosed yet pliable and tactile is precisely the supple dialectic I took away from Geometries.

Geometries continues at the São Paulo Museum of Art (Avenida Paulista 1578, São Paulo, Brazil) through August 3. The exhibition was curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Regina Teixeira de Barros with Matheus de Andrade.