Art Concret and Architecture. A new concept of Space

Abstract

This article is intended to understand the meaning and transformation of the category of “space” within the framework of the novel coarticulation between visual arts and architecture proposed by concrete art from the River Plate in its earliest stage. For this purpose, we study some key texts, by Tomás Maldonado and a conference by Ernesto N. Rogers, on which this movement is founded, and its new concept of space is formulated, which is not –without more– summarized in the earliest functionalist premises. These authors, both artists and designers, observe and reflect on a significant change in the way of defining, understanding and experiencing the spatiality of the new painting, sculpture and architecture, a change that concerns and modifies, in the midst of a revolutionary critique, the principle of “art as representation of nature” and the traditional connection between visual arts and architecture. The reading and discussion of these texts, in addition to forcing a redefinition of what concrete art is and what is its proposal to reformulate the category of “space”, provides the necessary elements to renew the discussion on the relationship between form and function, in the hiatus that separates and –at the same time– connects the visual arts with architecture.