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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Roberto Cobas Amate, curator, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana for confirming the authenticity of this work.
“The existence of Madinemsor is brilliant,” Darié wrote to Gyula Kosice in early 1950 upon receipt of the second issue of the journal Arte Madí Universal. “It is the concern of a group of men who arrive at the same conclusions in the plastic arts, amid the divided aesthetic of our times.” [1] The only Cuban member of the Madí movement, based in Buenos Aires and co-founded by Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin and Rhod Rothfuss, Darié positioned Havana within contemporary, transatlantic dialogues developing around geometric abstraction. With Mario Carreño and Luis Martínez Pedro, he promoted modern art in Havana’s pioneering journal Noticias de Arte (1952-53), and with Loló Soldevilla and others in the second half of the decade he continued his advocacy for concrete art, eventually joining the short-lived group Diez Pintores Concretos (1959-61).
Darié first became aware of the Madí movement at the time of his exhibition at New York’s Carlebach Gallery in 1949, when he met the Greek-American artist Jean Xceron, associated with the groups Abstraction-Création in Paris and American Abstract Artists in New York. Writing from Havana in November, Darié introduced himself to Kosice, explaining the connection through Xceron and inquiring about Madí publications and other activities. Their correspondence and mutual admiration continued throughout the decade. Darié sent examples of his work, including the present Pintura transformable, to Kosice for inclusion in group exhibitions; he also contributed a “Pensamiento Madista” to the fifth issue of Arte Madí Universal (October 1951), in which he praised the group’s “constructivist, which is to say ethical and progressively activist – madista – ideals.” [2]
Among Darié’s earliest experiments in constructivist form, Pintura transformable demonstrates his engagement with Madí precepts of creation. Comprised of five wooden rectangles affixed together at their midpoints, Pintura transformable dispenses with the traditional “frame” of painting in a classic Madí gesture, instead orienting its composition spatially around the movement of color and shape. As manipulated by the viewer, the five black-and-white elements challenge the static two-dimensionality of conventional painting, animating the Neo-Plastic grid and positing participatory aesthetics as a means of pictorial and, ultimately, social transformation.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Sandú Darié to Gyula Kosice, 30 January 1950, trans. Michael Agnew, in Cold America: Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934-1973), ed. Osbel Súarez (Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 2011), 466.
2) Darié, “Pensamiento madista,” Arte Madí Universal 5 (October 1951): n.p.
“The existence of Madinemsor is brilliant,” Darié wrote to Gyula Kosice in early 1950 upon receipt of the second issue of the journal Arte Madí Universal. “It is the concern of a group of men who arrive at the same conclusions in the plastic arts, amid the divided aesthetic of our times.” [1] The only Cuban member of the Madí movement, based in Buenos Aires and co-founded by Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin and Rhod Rothfuss, Darié positioned Havana within contemporary, transatlantic dialogues developing around geometric abstraction. With Mario Carreño and Luis Martínez Pedro, he promoted modern art in Havana’s pioneering journal Noticias de Arte (1952-53), and with Loló Soldevilla and others in the second half of the decade he continued his advocacy for concrete art, eventually joining the short-lived group Diez Pintores Concretos (1959-61).
Darié first became aware of the Madí movement at the time of his exhibition at New York’s Carlebach Gallery in 1949, when he met the Greek-American artist Jean Xceron, associated with the groups Abstraction-Création in Paris and American Abstract Artists in New York. Writing from Havana in November, Darié introduced himself to Kosice, explaining the connection through Xceron and inquiring about Madí publications and other activities. Their correspondence and mutual admiration continued throughout the decade. Darié sent examples of his work, including the present Pintura transformable, to Kosice for inclusion in group exhibitions; he also contributed a “Pensamiento Madista” to the fifth issue of Arte Madí Universal (October 1951), in which he praised the group’s “constructivist, which is to say ethical and progressively activist – madista – ideals.” [2]
Among Darié’s earliest experiments in constructivist form, Pintura transformable demonstrates his engagement with Madí precepts of creation. Comprised of five wooden rectangles affixed together at their midpoints, Pintura transformable dispenses with the traditional “frame” of painting in a classic Madí gesture, instead orienting its composition spatially around the movement of color and shape. As manipulated by the viewer, the five black-and-white elements challenge the static two-dimensionality of conventional painting, animating the Neo-Plastic grid and positing participatory aesthetics as a means of pictorial and, ultimately, social transformation.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
1) Sandú Darié to Gyula Kosice, 30 January 1950, trans. Michael Agnew, in Cold America: Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934-1973), ed. Osbel Súarez (Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 2011), 466.
2) Darié, “Pensamiento madista,” Arte Madí Universal 5 (October 1951): n.p.