Zanna Gilbert, from the Getty Research Institute, and Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, demonstrate how Argentine artists working in the 1940s broke the tradition of painting-as-window with shaped paintings (marcos recortados) and works that even pushed beyond the wall to blur the boundary between sculpture and painting. Watch Video
Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, explains the challenge that Concrete artists from Brazil and Argentina faced in making the perfectly straight lines that characterize their work. Three main methods—straight edge, ruling pen, and self-adhesive tape—all leave tell-tale traces, observable through microscopy or even by the naked eye. Watch Video
Sofía Frigerio delineates points of correspondence between modern artists who made works of geometric abstraction in Sweden and Latin America, as seen in the exhibition Concrete Matters [Feb 24, 2018-May 13, 2018] at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet. More
The Getty’s special collections archives include a wealth of ephemera, such as magazines, flyers, and pamphlets, related to the mid-twentieth century Concrete art movement in Latin America. Zanna Gilbert describes how these primary documents shed light on the inventive and interdisciplinary work of Concrete artists represented by a group of their works from the CPPC on loan to the Getty for a three-year investigation into their physical processes and philosophic foundations. More
Zanna Gilbert, from the Getty Research Institute, and Pia Gottschaller, from the Getty Conservation Institute, show us how Brazilian artists such as Judith Lauand and Geraldo de Barros responded to increasing societal industrialization by experimenting with industrial paints and application methods that eliminated evidence of the painter’s hand. Watch Video
