These works are by artists belonging to two adversarial yet ideologically similar Argentine artists' collectives, Arte Madí and Arte Concreto-Invención. Influenced by concrete art and related tendencies, they used geometric and systematic approaches to art making and, like many similar groups in Europe and South America, were socialist in outlook, endorsing collective action over individualism. Their paintings were usually not collectively made, but they often hung them on a wall together, almost as a single statement. Artists were sometimes unidentified; at other times they assumed aliases. Seeing artistic freedom as the highest priority, members of these groups rejected the conventional rectangular canvas, which they felt restricted their options regarding composition. The result is the shaped paintings that you see here.
