The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art

Waldemar Cordeiro—landscape designer, painter, electronic artist, theorist, and critic—was Brazilian on his father's side and Italian on his mother's. He studied in Italy and traveled in 1946 to Brazil, where he settled in São Paulo. In the 1950s he founded the Ruptura Group and wrote its manifesto, thus becoming a central figure in São Paulo's Concrete art movement. Cordeiro defended Concrete art's mathematical and rational principles in the face of the Rio de Janeiro Neo-Concrete group, which advocated a more sensorial and cognitive Geometric Abstraction. The concept behind the series Idéia visível (Visible Idea) clearly demonstrates that Cordeiro considered the object a mere concrete abstraction.

 Related ICAA documents:

Lothar Charroux et al., “Ruptura,” 1952 (record ID 771349)

“Concretistas na Galeria das ‘Folhas,’” 1959 (record ID 1232732)

Waldemar Cordeiro and Luís Sacilotto, “Exposição nacional de arte concreta: artes visuais poesia,” 1956 (record ID 1232176)

Waldemar Cordeiro, "Ainda o Abstracionismo," 1986 (record ID 1085351)

Waldemar Cordeiro, "Arte concreta semântica," 1964 (record ID 1110835)

Waldemar Cordeiro, " O objeto," 1956 (record ID 1086891)

Waldemar Cordeiro, [Produto direto de uma atitude crítica...], 1960 (record ID 1087239)

Waldemar Cordeiro, "Realismo: "musa da vingança e da tristeza," 1965 (record ID 1110839)

Waldemar Cordeiro, "Ruptura," 1953 (record ID 1085337)

Waldemar Cordeiro, "Teoria e práctica do concretismo carioca," 1957 (record ID 10872847)