A few Considerations on the Materialist Aesthetics of Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención

Abstract

The following paper analyzes key aesthetic ideas from the avant- garde theoretical production of the Arte Concreto-Invención, a group that in the mid-40s revolutionized the Argentinean art field with a disruptive artistic and political proposal. As noted by the artists themselves, the aesthetic-political program of Concrete Art begins from the premises of historical materialism. While its basics are framed in Marxist aesthetics, this categorization can be too wide for our analysis, due to the variety of proposals and conceptualizations that can be included within. That is why this paper will aim to define the specificity of the Argentinean aesthetics of concreteness in relation to other aesthetics that define or consider themselves Marxists. The work includes a review of primary sources that haven’t been deeply considered, focusing primarily on the writings that Tomás Maldonado drawn between 1944 and 1954, which is where the artist defines his art proposal by arguing with other artists, intellectuals and other ways of understanding the relationship between art, reality and social transformation.