History

Created by Flexor (1907 - 1971), the Atelier-Abstração [Studio Abstraction] was one of the most important spaces for artistic training in the city of São Paulo during the 1950s. The artist turned his house into a studio where a group of young people met to paint and draw. The proposal was to "create a space to develop a calculated ordering of forms and colours", as Flexor explained. The entry test, as the pupils recalled, was to draw a guitar with a ruler and a square, the point being to teach them to interpret the essential forms of the figures chosen as models, fragmenting them into geometric planes, in Cubist fashion. Drawing in perspective on graph paper was another activity frequently used by the teacher, which led to the gradual introduction of abstraction. At a second stage, the pupils worked with colours, first with warm tones, then with cool ones. Participants in the group included Izar do Amaral Berlinck (1918- ), Zilda Andrews, Emílio Mallet, Leopoldo Raimo (1912- ), Jacques Douchez (1921- ), Maria Antonia Berlinck, Leyla Perrone, Norberto Nicola (1930 - 2007), Wega Nery (1912 - 2007 ), Anésia Pacheco Chaves (1931- ), Alberto Teixeira (1925- ) and Nelson Leirner (1933- ), the last of these for a brief period.

Flexor and his pupils realised a series of joint exhibitions. Izar, Douchez, Wega, Raimo and Teixeira took part in the first, in 1953, at the Instituto dos Arquitetos do Brasil - IAB/SP [Institute of Brazilian Architects] in São Paulo. The second group exhibition was held in July 1954 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo - MAM/SP [São Paulo Museum of Modern Art] at a time when the studio-residence of the artist, designed by Rino Levi (1901 - 1965), moved to the Rua Gaspar Lourenço, 587 in the suburb of Vila Mariana. A further exhibition followed in 1955 at the Mackenzie Institute. In 1956, the new exhibition of the group at the MAM/SP provided a clearer vision of the school's teachings: the search for equilibrium between the geometric forms, the attempt to impose a rhythm and movement on the composition, the development of a chromatic sensibility and the search for the structural unity of the work. In the text to the catalogue, seen as a kind of manifesto for the Atelier-Abstração, Flexor indicated that: "An abstract painting does not represent but presents itself/ An abstract painting does not express but expresses itself/ An abstract painting is already a presence in itself and its only significance is itself". With this, the artist makes explicit his vision of painting not as an art of imitation but as being close to musical and architectural art, which are major arts due to their "capacity for invention, order and sensibility". As scholars indicate, in this definition it is hard not to locate echoes of the Neoplasticism of Piet Mondrian (1872 - 1944) and the Concrete Art of Theo van Doesburg (1883 - 1931).

Settling in São Paulo at the end of 1948, after a long period of training outside the country, first in Brussels and then in Paris (he became a French citizen in 1930), Flexor found an artistic atmosphere in the city marked by debates on abstract art. The exhibition of Max Bill (1908 - 1994) at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand - Masp [Assis Chateaubriand Museum of Art of São Paulo] and the presence of the Swiss delegation at the 1st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo [São Paulo International Bienal], both in 1951, opened the country to the new Constructivist tendencies that were widely explored from then onwards. The prizes awarded to the sculpture Tripartite Unity by Max Bill, and the canvas Formas [Forms], by Ivan Serpa, at the 1st Bienal, point to the attention awoken by the new pictorial languages. Researches into abstraction also benefited from the following exhibitions: 19 Pintores [19 Painters], at the Prestes Maia Gallery in São Paulo in 1947, which formed the seed of the São Paulo Concretist group; Do Figurativismo ao Abstracionismo [From Figurativism to Abstraction] at the MAM/SP in 1949; Alexander Calder at the Masp in 1949; and Fotoformas [Photoforms] by Geraldo de Barros (1923 - 1998) at the Masp in 1950. The year 1952 and the Grupo Ruptura [Rupture Group] exhibition in turn marked the official start of the Concretist movement in São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, pupils of Ivan Serpa (1923 - 1973)'s course at the MAM/RJ formed the Grupo Frente [Frente Group] (1954). The divergences between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo became explicit with the start of the Neoconcretist breakaway in 1959.

Flexor took an active part in the artistic life of the period, participating in two important exhibitions, the Bienal of 1951 and Do Figurativismo ao Abstracionismo, realising group exhibitions with his pupils and writing texts defending his aesthetic positions (e.g. Considerações sobre Arte Abstrata [Considerations on Abstract Art], published in issue 28 of the magazine Habitat in 1956). He occupied a singular position in the art scene of the time without adhering to any of the existing groups. His defence of abstraction did not bring him closer either to lyrical abstraction or to the Concretist and Neoconcertist movements. For him, abstract painting was rooted in mathematical and geometric concepts. Furthermore, as some critics indicate, he never entirely abandoned the figure, even in his most radically abstract phase. Adhering from 1945 onwards to abstraction in a Cubist mould (e.g. Menino Estudando Matemática [Boy Studying Mathematics]), with strong inspiration from Picasso in a number of works (Figura [Figure] (1946) and La Creole (1947)), Flexor points to a compromise solution between the figure and geometric researches (Peixes [Fishes] 1948). During the 1950s, when abstraction reached its peak, in works such as Invenções [Inventions] (1952), Modulações [Modulations] (1954) and Arlequinadas [Harlequinades] (1956), he resumed the study of the female figure of previous eras, together with purely geometric studies.

The group that met at the Ateliê Abstração split up in 1958, after a final group show in New York at the Rolland Arnelle Gallery. In 1961, Flexor formed a new group, the Ateliê Abstração 2, which was shorter lived with less cohesion between its members, who included Charlotta Adlerova (1908 - 1989), Halina Drapinski, Maria Helena Occhi, Ida Shaib, Michiko Komatsu, André Cahen, Hans Grunebaum and Sérgio de Freitas Azevedo in this phase. Even with his intense work as a teacher, to which the experience of the Ateliê Abstração attests, Flexor pursued a range of activities as an artist. In addition to painting, he worked as an illustrator and author of projects linked to architecture, such as the stained glass window for the Hoolnagem family (1952), the panels for the Clube Paulistano and the São Luiz Hospital and the frescoes for his own house and that of his pupil, Leopoldo Raimo.