rupture and the group: abstraction and concrete art, 70 years

artists
Anatol Wladyslaw
Geraldo de Barros
Hermelindo Fiaminghi
Judith Lauand
Kazmer Féjer
Leopold Haar
Lothar Charoux
Luiz Sacilotto
Maurício Nogueira Lima
Waldemar Cordeiro

RUPTURA AND THE GROUP
abstraction and concrete art, 70 years

On December 9, 1952, a group of seven artists performed at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM) as the group Ruptura, launching a manifesto that bore the same name. Although the exhibition lasted only twelve days, its consequences were long-lasting. The impact of abstract art in that context and the slogans of the manifesto provoked heated debates, which echoed throughout the 1950s. Over time, Ruptura became a milestone in the history of modern art in Latin America.

Three of the artists who participated in the inaugural exhibition – Leopold Haar, Kazmér Féjer e Waldemar Cordeiro – were immigrants who settled in Brazil in the immediate post-war period, bringing with them not only the traumas of the conflict, but their experience with abstract art groups that were emerging with strength in Europe. Anatol Wladyslaw e Lothar Charoux still children came from Poland and Austria respectively; Geraldo de Barros e Luiz Sacilotto were born in Brazil. The group's members came from middle- and working-class backgrounds, or faced the challenge of rebuilding their lives. Even so, in a country with a slave-owning past, being white and European meant having more favorable conditions for social advancement than the majority of the Brazilian population.

The group defended abstraction as a transformation project, capable of permeating people's daily lives, influencing industry and organizing life on its most diverse scales: from fine arts to design, from architecture to the city. They understood that visual language built with simple elements – lines, colors and planes – had the power to overcome geographic, social and cultural borders, being able to raise awareness among people from different contexts and origins. In defense of an art renewal project that would have a broad social impact, they proposed a break with figuration and types of abstraction centered on the individuality of artists, which they judged to be inappropriate for the time in which they lived.

Ruptura and the group: abstraction and concrete art, 70 years walks in two directions. Initially, the visitor will have contact with a set of works and photographic records that refer to the inaugural exhibition of 1952 – two paintings that were presented at the time and others that represent the artists' production in the early 1950s – as the existing documentation does not allows the historical exhibition to be reconstructed. Secondly, we will address the production and formation of the group throughout the 1950s. In those years, the original composition of the group was modified with the death of Leopold Haar and the removal of Anatol Wladyslaw e Geraldo de Barros. In contrast, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, Judith Lauand e Maurício Nogueira Lima join those who remained working together. Strictly speaking, the group Ruptura only performed under that name in December 1952. However, Charoux, Lamb, Sacilotto, Fiaminghi, Lauand e Nogueira Lima stated, throughout their lives, that they were part of the group Ruptura, active in São Paulo in the 1950s. Even though there were no other public presentations by the group Ruptura with exactly that name, the artists' narrative and the strong correspondences between their research The visuals make us understand that they continued to act as a group.

Looking at the group Ruptura today does not mean adhering to the proposals of its manifesto, but considering the circumstances of its appearance, as well as the various contradictions between the text and what the artists produced at the same time. The history gathered here, despite the formal clarity of the works, does not exclude inaccuracies, nor mistakes in the reading of an unequal and challenging reality. On the other hand, the group's engagement and persistence in exploring problems of this order demonstrates its belief in the infinite – and, therefore, libertarian – possibilities of imagining new orderings of the world.

Heloisa Espada and Yuri Quevedo
Curatorship