Radical Geometry, Royal Academy, review: 'stunning'

The Radical Geometry exhibition of abstract South American work

utterly transforms our understanding of 20th-century art, says Alastair
Smart

By: Alastair Smart

I lose track of the number of exhibitions that have promised a radical reappraisal
of an artist or movement only to be as revelatory as a soggy sock. The RA bucks
that trend utterly, however, with its new show of abstract South American art from
the Thirties to the Seventies.

As we all know, Abstraction had developed in Europe via Impressionism and
later movements in the early 20th-century, but where Radical Geometry comes
into its own is in revealing how vital artists from Montevideo to Caracas were in
taking things forward. They adapted the new visual language of abstraction
specifically, geometric abstraction to express the progress and prosperity
emanating from South American countries at the time.

In the wake of the Great Depression, Spanish Civil War and Second World War,
exiles and refugees aplenty made their way to the Americas to start anew. With
them came knowledge of the European precedents of geometric abstraction
(Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, Mondrian) and our tale begins with Joaqun
Torres-Garca, who returned to his native Uruguay in 1934 after decades in Paris.

His grids are filled with pictographic elements that recall the relief stonework on
pre-Columbian temples: suns, anchors and fish in Constructive Composition 16s
case. He united the ancient and avant-garde, in a bid to root a new artistic utopia
firmly in South America.

Across the River Plate, in Buenos Aires, artists were more explicitly political,
advocating geometric abstraction as the art form of coming social revolution
given its universal language and anti-individualist aesthetic. As had been the case
in the early years of the Soviet Union, abstract art and communism dovetailed.


Among the standout works are Juan Mels Irregular Frames No. 2 (1946), a
geometric composition of jagged shape that overthrew the tradition of paintings
with rectangular frames, which since the Renaissance had illusionistically
suggested a window onto the world.




Joaqun Torres-Garca: Construction in White and Black, 1938


Time and again, we see a turning away from Europe. Indeed, in some way, surely
the very embrace of abstraction was a rejection of the strict figurative tradition that
the Conquistadores had promulgated in churches across the New World.

By the Fifties, our focus turns to newly democratic, fast-industrialising Brazil.
National confidence was expressed in its new, International Style capital, Brasilia.
In Rio de Janeiro, meanwhile, the Neoconcrete artists were making geometric
abstraction more participatory: through sculpture.

Lygia Clarks Bichos are hinged, creature-like works of aluminium, with geometric
planes that you can bend into various arrangements. With his parangols, in turn,

Helio Oiticica went so far as to envisage geometric compositions as clothing: to be
worn during dances, shattering the stuffy notion that art must appear on walls or on
pedestals.

Understandably, the parangoles appear here only as objects: the RA hasnt
employed a group of dancers. And this reflects the unshowy effect of Radical
Geometry as a whole: it acts as a sage corrective to the stereotype of South
America as a place of tropical colour and excess sensuality. The palettes are
muted. Whats more, theres none of the freestyle brushwork we associate with the
contemporaneous Abstract Expressionists in New York.

One cant help but compare the artists with their US and European counterparts
throughout, and one sees a stunning alternative history of 20th century art playing
out before our eyes. (Credit to Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, upon whose vast
collection the works are drawn and whose mission it has become to open our eyes
to South American excellence.)

The shows latest works, from oil-rich Venezuela, invite comparison to Op Art. In
his series of painted Physichromie structures, Carlos Cruz-Diez deploys vertical
strips which change colour according to the viewers position and the ambient light.
Jess Rafael Soto shared his fascination with lights transitory effects, but was
interested most in pioneering an art that was kinetic. His Penetrables are walk-
through cubes with shimmeringly lit strands of plastic hanging from ceiling to floor.

Sadly there isnt room to include an example in the compact Sackler Galleries
perhaps one of only two regrets I have about this exhibition. The other is the
narrative of unremitting positivity. Latin America was no stranger to dictatorships in
the 20th century, and Id have liked to hear more about how certain artists, at
certain times, actually used abstraction as a means of subsuming their political
dissent.

That said, one shouldnt quibble. This is a quietly marvellous show. And to all those
who once suffered excruciatingly through maths classes, trust me: geometry has
never been so riveting.

Copyright The Telegraph