A critical controversy : a critical controversy

Abstract

The Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro - MAM Rio - was an institution recently inaugurated in the Brazilian artistic scene of the decade of the 1950s. Aiming to be the stage for the most recent art, the Museum held exhibitions of geometric and informal abstract art, organized courses, and gathered the proponents of concrete and neo-concrete art. Two exhibitions in particular, the Grupo Frente second collective exhibition and the 1st Neoconcrete Exhibition, are mainstays of the scholarship on Brazilian concretism. However, it is important to research the Alfredo Volpi retrospective, organized by Mário Pedrosa in 1957. This exhibition was widely commented by the main critics of the time, with texts by Mário Pedrosa, Antônio Bento, Jayme Maurício, José Roberto Teixeira Leite, Manuel Bandeira and Ferreira Gullar. Studying individual exhibitions such as Volpi's, we aim to reveal previously unstudied connections about how geometric abstraction was experienced in Brazil. Considering that Volpi was already a prestigious painter, his participation in the concrete trend reaffirmed the value of the movement. This study will seek to reconstruct the critical debate that occurred, highlighting its main lines of tension.