History
A historic milestone in the Constructivist movement within Brazil, the Grupo Frente [Frente Group], under the leadership of the Rio-based artist Ivan Serpa (1923 - 1973), one of the precursors of Geometric Abstraction in Brazil, opened its first exhibition in 1954 at the Ibeu Gallery in Rio de Janeiro. The show, presented by the critic Ferreira Gullar (1930- ), included work by the artists Aluísio Carvão (1920 - 2001), Carlos Val (1937), Décio Vieira (1922 - 1988), Ivan Serpa, João José da Silva Costa (1931- ), Lygia Clark (1920 - 1988), Lygia Pape (1927 - 2004) and Vicent Ibberson (19--), most of whom were pupils or former pupils of Serpa's courses at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ). Despite the fact that they were informed by discussions on abstraction and Concrete Art, with works lying above all in the register of Geometric Abstraction, the group was not characterised by a single stylistic position, with the link uniting its members being the rejection of Modernist Brazilian painting of a figurative and nationalist character.

The openness to other forms of artistic expression and a greater liberty with regard to the Concretist theories of Max Bill (1908 - 1994), for example, became more apparent in the group's second exhibition in 1955 at the MAM/RJ. Here, the founders of the group were joined by seven other artists: Abraham Palatnik (1928- ), César Oiticica (1939- ), Franz Weissmann (1911 - 2005), Hélio Oiticica (1937 - 1980), Elisa Martins da Silveira (1912 - 2001) and Eric Baruch. In addition to the diversity of techniques and materials employed (pastels, wood engraving, kinetic objects, collage, etc.), a certain variation in styles was also perceivable, such as the primitive painting of Elisa Martins and the lyrical geometric construction full of nuances of Décio Vieira (1922 - 1988). As the critic Mário Pedrosa (1900 - 1981) noted, in a text presenting this second exhibition, it was not a case of a "closed clique, and far less an academy where little rules and recipes for making Abstractionism, Concretism, Expressionism (...) and other 'isms' were taught and learned". On the contrary, in the eyes of the critic, respect for "freedom of creation" was the postulate that they defended above all others.

For the artists of the Frente Group, geometric language is, above all, a field open to experience and to exploration. The independence and individuality with which it treated the theoretical postulates of Concrete Art were at the centre of the criticisms that the Concretist group of São Paulo directed at the group, most notably through the artist and spokesman for the São Paulo movement, Waldemar Cordeiro (1925 - 1973). Strictly speaking, these artists cannot be called Concrete artists, since from the outset they ignored the notion of the artistic object as an exercise in the rational concretisation of an idea whose execution required prior guidance by clear and intelligible laws, preferably mathematical calculations. At the same time, it was this autonomy and a certain measure of experimentation present in the Frente group that guaranteed the singular development that the Constructivist poetics would experience in the works of some of its members as early as the second half of the 1950s. We should recall here the Superfícies Moduladas [Modulated Surfaces] by Lygia Clark, the sculptures by Weissmann, in which the void becomes an active element of the structures, the series of reliefs, poem-objects and poems-light and the Tecelares [Weavings] by Lygia Pape, and the kinetic experiences of Palatnik.

The group's last exhibitions took place in 1956, in Resende and Volta Redonda, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The 1st National Exhibition of Concrete Art, organised by the Concretists of São Paulo with the collaboration of the Rio group, which took place in December 1956 and February 1957 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - MAM/SP [São Paulo Museum of Modern Art] and the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in Rio de Janeiro, respectively, exposed the distance between the two Concretist groups. Its repercussions, both among the public and for the artists, mark the beginning of a new phase in Brazilian Concrete Art that required the Rio-based artists to adopt a more well-defined position in the face of the ideas articulated by the São Paulo Concretists. The exhibition also helped to reveal the extent of Abstract-Geometric Art of a Constructivist and Concretist stamp within Brazil. After the show, the Frente Group both broke with the São Paulo artists and began to disintegrate. Two years later, some of its members would join forces to start the Neoconcretist Movement, one of the most significant in Brazilian art.