Waldemar Cordeiro’s Oeuvre and Its Context: A Biographical Note

Waldemar Cordeiro’s Oeuvre and Its Context: A Biographical Note Waldemar Cordeiro was born in Rome in 1925of a Brazilian father and an Italian mother. He started to show his early work as a teenager in Italy, but it was not until he arrived in S5o Paulo in 1946, after choosing Brazilian citizenship, that he got involved with modern art issues. Upon his arrival, he wrote art criticism for a local paper. He also published caricatures and illustrations in daily newspapers. At the time, modern art in Brazil was still in a slow process of development, despite the important early impetus provided by the pioneering work of painters Anita Malfatti and Tarsila do Amaral in the 1910sand 1920s;the irreverent poetry of LuisAranha, Oswald de Andrade and Mario de Andrade in the 1920s;and the radical cinema of Mario Peixoto and the innovative happenings of Flivio de Carvalho in the 1930s.For example, in 1945,when the first modern art gallery opened in Rio deJaneiro, Arden Quinn and Gyula Kosice had already founded Agrupacih Arte Concreto-Invenci6n (Concrete art-Invention Group) in Argentina. The Argentinean group furthered the Constructivist lesson then being advanced by Max Bill in Switzerland;Bill had been promoting the name (Concrete art) and the ideas first proposed by The0 Van Doesburg in 1930. Cordeiro arrived in an urban and industrialized environment that had witnessed the modern revolution in art and which was ready for its next development . The first modern art gallery in S5o Paulo opened in 1946;in 1947the Museum of Art of S5o Paulo opened its doors to the public; and in 1948both the Museum of Modern Art of S5o Paulo and Museum of Modern Art, in Rio deJaneiro, were founded. The prevailing modern style, however, was a nationalist figurativismof a distant cubist derivation, as exemplified by the work of painter C2ndido Portinari. In Rio deJaneiro, a group of young artists was being formed around the art critic Mario Pedrosa in 1947-1948. Pedrosa exposed Abraham Palatnik, Ivan Serpa and Almir Mavignier to the principles of Gestalt theory-an influence that would prove instrumental in the development of geometric abstraction and kinetic art in the country. Cordeiro painted in an expressionist style throughout the 1940s;however, by 1949 he had already embraced the new international Constructivist trend, which foregrounded geometric abstraction. In 1949, the same year that Palatnik started to develop his kinetic art [l],Cordeiro founded the S5o Paulo chapter of the International Arts Club and published art criticism in a daily paper. That year, the Museum of Modern Art of S5o Paulo hosted an exhibition showcasing abstract art. The passage into the 1950ssaw increased interest in abstraction in Brazil. In 1950, Max Bill had an exhibition at the Museum of Art of SGo Paulo. The first S%O Paul0 Biennial took place in 1951,showing the work of Brazilian abstract artists (including Cordeiro, Kazmer Fejer, Luis Sacilotto, Serpa and Palatnik) and presenting awards to Max Bill and Serpa. At last, acceptance of abstract and Constructivist art seemed imminent . The group Frente (Front) was formed in Rio deJaneiro around the influential painter Ivan Serpa, while the group Ruptura (Rupture) was created in S5o Paulo around the already polemical Cordeiro, both in 1952. Artists from the Ruptura group u3 1997ISAST LEONARD0,Vol. 30,No.1, pp. 23-25,1997 23 showed their abstract paintings at the Museum of Modern Art of S5o Paulo in 1952. The same institution hosted an exhibition of Concrete art from Argentina the following year. From that time on, Cordeiro supported his work as a visual artist with professional landscaping contracts. Although at first his landscaping work wasjust a means to earn a living, soon Cordeiro would realize the need to apply Concrete art principles to all sectors of society, extending his own programmatic creative pursuits to this activity as well. One important event that ephemerally united both abstract groups was the exhibition “I Exposicgo Nacional de Arte Concreta” (First National Exhibition of Concrete Art) organized by the Ruptura group in 1956,at the Museum of Modern Art of S5o Paulo. Comprised of visual artists and poets, the show traveled the next year to Rio deJaneiro. This brief moment of...