Carmelo Arden Quin: Invention Uruguayan modern art Leon Tovar Gallery

Fall in love with the irregular frames, sensual curves, articulated sculptures and Madí philosophy in the exhibition of Uruguayan – Argentine – French artist Carmelo Arden Quin : Invention, a retrospective at Leon Tovar Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan from April 26 – July 27, 2018.

Carmelo Arden Quin

Carmelo Arden Quin was born in Rivera, Uruguay in 1913. He grew up in Uruguay and Brazil. His mentor was European modern art legend Joaquín Torres-García.

Arden Quin worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the early 1940s where he co-founded the artistic movement Grupo Madí. In 1944, he helped publish Arturo, a one-issue magazine that was one of the first to show European artists in Latin America.

In 1946 Arden Quin moved to Paris where he spent most of the rest of his life. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked with mobiles. In the 1970s he played with the “H” form. In the 1980s, he made “coplanals,” works that connected two picture planes. Arden Quin died outside of Paris in 2010.

The artist was a traveler in the Post War Period, a time of great change in art and social changes around the world. He captures the dynamic movement, instability, and hopes of the period in his art.

Arden Quin’s work has exhibited at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art.

Grupo Madí

Grupo Madí was founded in Buenos Aires in 1946 by Hungarian – Argentine artist Gyula Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin and fellow Uruguayan Rhod Rothfuss.

It’s a playful reaction to the rigors of European Concrete Art (geometric abstraction). Grupo Madí challenged the norms of Western art and the propaganda art of Peronism.