Informalism between Surrealism and Concrete Art: Aldo Pellegrini and the Promotion of Modern Art in Buenos Aires during the 1950s

Abstract

This chapter addresses the relationship between abstraction and Surrealism, which was crystalized in Informalist art of the 1950s through Aldo Pellegrini's central role. It introduces a case for an analysis of Surrealist poets such as Aldo Pellegrini (and Julio Llinas) as a catalyst for a reformulation of the artistic panorama and the promotion of international Informalism in the cultural field of Buenos Aires. The chapter argues that Pellegrini's approach to Surrealism and Concrete art exposes both poetics as much more closely linked and permeable than has been considered in the historiography of modern art. In effect, the emergence of Informalism in Argentina was the result of the ways two central movements of the modern art tradition occurred in the country: the hegemonic position of geometric abstraction and the revival of Surrealism. In an exhibition of Arte Nuevo in the Pizarro Gallery in 1958, Kenneth Kemble presented a collage made with rags and burlap.