Abdulio Giudici
Living and studying in Buenos Aires, Abdulio Giudici got to know the work of abstract artists who, in the 1940s, burst onto the art scene with Tomás Maldonado (among others) and the magazine Arturo. Their exploration, begun in 1948, moved toward an abstraction in which depth and volume would disappear, as would color modulation. The flat planes settle into space in an up and down relation, rather than one of forward and behind. Giudici will manage to suppress naturalistic space, and his composition will grow increasingly hard and pure, with increasingly clean edges. Light will lose its precision, and come from the most intense values. He will establish mathematical relation and symmetry; will leave behind the concept of figure and ground; will solidify primary and secondary colors, the square frame, the gold section, and abstract geometric figures. In the '50s, the artist gets closer to balance, harmony, rigorousness of proportions, and the search for a "purity" in his art.
He jealously looks for a consonance of forms and colors, respecting the integration of the entire surface of the medium as a theme of his painting. That painting grows ever more ascetic, and definitively cuts loose from any message that is not purely formal.
In the 60s, Giudici devotes himself to experimentation with changing images. He goes from a grid pattern of squares, rectangles or rhombuses whose colors are even and equal. The images are visually textured, a play of advance and retreat begins that leads to virtual movement, heralding his entry into op and kinetic art. From the mid-decade on, Giudici sets aside color and through whites, blacks, and sometimes a gray or two, he creates a play of vibrations, rotations, peculiarities, instabilities. The geometry of his works is no longer static and immutable; rather, it blinks, it throbs.
Through the 70s, there appear in his output three-dimensional works that attempt to unite painting and sculpture. Colors return, but they maintain the mathematical, geometric foundations from which he is now never to stray. He uses artificial light, mirrors, and glass to create shifting aspects. He momentarily abandons the square medium and incorporates other geometric figures. He organizes, distributes, parcels out, balances forms and colors, in his quest to represent universal order and harmony. Here all is measured rationally, and Giudici wants an art that distinguishes itself through its intellectual attitude.
In the 80s, the participation of the viewer will be necessary in the so-called "Magic Boxes" [“Cajas Mágicas”], works that can be manipulated to produce visual surprises. In the paintings from these years there appear all the colors of the spectrum, cheerfully luminous. Throughout the 90s, order, symmetry, and other concepts basic to his oeuvre for the first time ever stand aside, to allow a bit of imagery, in which accident, chance, contingency find their space, however small. He continues working on three-dimensional pieces and makes a great many mobiles, all of them in flat, saturated colors.
Today he is the fundamental role model for an aesthetic that rejects figuration, expression, symbolism and, definitively, representation as mimesis of surrounding reality. By his criterion, the work must present its basic elements: forms, colors, planes, and no reference to anything but its own reality. We find ourselves facing a denial of perspective, exaltation of the two-dimensional, the geometric, the blending of forms and colors through harmony, balance, and symmetry – confronted with a plastic image valid in itself and not for what it represents.
He is also interested in greater compatibility among the various arts and in the use of new materials. He aspires to a direct relationship between art, design, and daily life. Of these variants, too, he remains a fundamental role model.
Socorro Cubillos
B.A. in the History of Visual Arts, Master's in Latin American Art (thesis candidate), FAD UNCuyo, instructor, cultural consultant, and curator.