Kosice, Gyula (director).

[LATIN AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE – ART THEORY] Antología de la poesía Madí [Anthology of Madí poetry]. Inscribed by Kosice.

Buenos Aires: Arte Madí, 1955. Octavo (20.2 × 16.5 cm). Original pictorial wrappers with a reproduction of a photogram by Guillermo Adolfo Gutierrez; 138 pp. printed on brown wrapping paper and white art paper with numerous photographic portraits of the featured Madí members. Title page with handwritten dedication by Gyula Kosice to Manuel Álvarez (1923–2013, editor of the Argentinian art magazine “Arte Nuevo”). Wrappers worn, with front wrapper nearly detached; overall signs of wear; text toned; still about good. Item #54491

The movement made its first public appearance in the art world in 1944 with the journal "Arturo", which had its own unique program, although only one issue was published. The central figures of this new movement in Latin America were Gyula Kosice (1924–1916), Carmelo Arden Quin (1913–2010), and Rhod Rothfuss (1920–1969). The group's declared aim was not only to overcome expressionist, realistic, and romantic formal languages, but also, in the spirit of Concrete Art, to abandon any form of representation – the works should neither represent nor express anything. However, the Argentinians broke new ground. Characteristic for them was, of all things, the negation of the rectangular frame, which not only posed no problem for the continental representatives of this movement, but also fitted in well with their program of (mechanical) standardization of art and everyday life. The rectangular frame was virtually pars pro toto for the striving for typification of individual elements in art. (On this and the following: Perazzo, Nelly, and William Schwaller. "Arte Madí." Grove Art Online. 2003; Accessed 5 Jul. 2024.)

However, the Argentines saw the right-angled frame as a contradiction to their efforts to banish all representation from art. They recognized in the right angles of the frame strips the art theory of the early modern period, which defined the picture as "una finestra aperta" (an open window). Rothfuss contrasted Leon Battista Alberti's "finestra aperta" with the "marco recortado" ("structured frame"), which was, as it were, nestled against the irregular, polygonal, and geometric compositions. The Argentinians were thus a decade ahead of the North American abstract artists. Moreover, Košice was a pioneer in the use of new industrial materials such as Plexiglas and neon light.

Following disagreements within the group surrounding the "Arturo" project, part of the group split off and founded the "Asociación Arte Concreto – Invención" (Association of Concrete Art and Invention). The remaining artists, including Rothfuss, Košice and the composer Estéban Eitler (1913–1960), adopted the name "Madí", a neologism similar to "Dada". Some believe it to be an abbreviation for "Movimiento de Arte de Invención". The group first became visible in Buenos Aires in June 1946, when they announced their solo exhibitions with programmatic flyers. The first large group exhibition with manifestos, paintings, sculptures, poems and architectural models as well as music and dance performances took place just a few weeks later in August of the same year. As early as 1948, the group was also able to present itself to the European public at the "Salon des réalités nouvelles" in Paris, after Arden Quin had emigrated to Paris. Even though Argentinian Concrete Art went its own way, the movement was still linked to the continental avant-gardes. One of her comrades-in-arms, for example, was the photographer Grete Stern, who had emigrated from Germany, studied in Walter Peterhans' class in Dessau and Berlin on the recommendation of Otto Umbehr until the Bauhaus was closed, and then founded the famous photo studio "ringl + pit" with her fellow student Ellen Auerbach.

However, Argentinian Concrete Art was not only influenced by the European avant-gardes, but also played a decisive role in shaping them. One of the initiators of "Arturo" and co-founder of the Madí counter-project "Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención", the painter and designer Tomás Maldonado (1922–2018), was appointed by Max Bill to the "Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung" (which inherited the Bauhaus) and was ultimately its rector. In Ulm, he belonged to a group such as Otl Aicher, who called for a closer connection between design, science and technology. After his time in Ulm he worked for the pioneering company "Olivetti", where he designed icons for data processing. Today, he is considered a key and leading figure of design culture in Italy. (AKL LXXXVI, 2015, 458.).