[LATIN AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE – ART THEORY] Perceptismo: teórico y polémico [Perceptivism: theoretical and polemical]. Nos. 1–6 (of 7).

Buenos Aires: self-published, October 1950 – January 1953. Small folios (40.2 × 29.5 cm). Original photo-illustrated self-wrappers; nos. 1–6 each [8] pp. and no. 6: [12] pp. with numerous reproductions of photographs documenting perceptivist exhibitions in Buenos Aires and elsewhere, alongside works of art by Albers, Calder, Moholy-Nagy, Mondrian, Max Bill, Le Corbusier, El Greco, Cézanne, Tintoretto, Mantegna, Botticelli, etc. Leaves partly somewhat toned; the first two issues somewhat stained and with minor marginal tears; first issue torn at the fold and title page with annotations; else about very good. Item #54482

Nearly complete run, lacking only the scarce final issue, of the art-theoretical journal of the Perceptivist group, who worked on the immanent problems of form in Concrete Art in their works and essays. The term Perceptivism was coined by the Argentinean artist Raúl Lozza after he turned his back on the "Asociación Arte Concreto - Invención" (Association of Concrete Art and Invention), which he had joined in 1945. His most important comrades-in-arms and authors in the periodical, which was only published in Buenos Aires between October 1950 and July 1953, were Rembrandt van Dyck Lozza and Abraham Haber.

For this group of artists and art critics, it was clear that the development of art history, its historical progress so to speak, would consist of completely detaching itself from representationalism and all forms of representation in order to ultimately be completely autonomous and no longer refer to anything other than itself. Perceptivism saw its task as eliminating all heteronomy in form and content. Even Concrete Art, which had set out with the program of merely referring to the concrete forms in the respective work, would be insufficiently successful in this. The criticism was that by placing areas of color on a surface, even non-figurative artists would unintentionally produce an illusory space, i.e. a representation of space. In other words: By painting color and form on a panel or canvas, color and form are no longer perceived merely as such, but as spatial representations of them. (On this and the following, see: Invencionismo, Madí, Perceptismo, in: Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, no. 9 (1997), pp. 239-242.)

In order to solve this inherent problem, Raúl Lozza proposed abandoning panels and canvases as backgrounds (the "false backgrounds") and attaching the concrete components of color and form to the wall itself, so that the geometric figures are exhibited as themselves in real space. Nothing in art should represent anything other than itself; art as a mere color and geometric fact that no longer refers to anything else. The periodical deals with these considerations of form throughout and, to this end, looks extensively not only at the works of its own present and their immediate predecessors, but also at the broad fields of art history and archaeology.

As of June 2024, OCLC lists six holdings in North America.

Price: €2,500.00

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