Madí

Madí is a movement of playful geometric invention launched in Buenos Aires in 1946 by Gyula Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin, and Rhod Rothfuss, breaking away from what they saw as the rigid rationalism of the Arte Concreto-Invención group. Its manifesto championed invention above all: paintings leave the rectangular frame behind for cut-out, irregular shapes, and sculpture turns articulated, mechanical, or kinetic. Colour is flat and sharply bounded; objects stand on their own reality rather than depicting anything. The group published the magazine Arte Madí Universal (1947-1954) and exhibited internationally, from Paris's Salon des Réalités Nouvelles to a long second life in Europe after Arden Quin settled in France. Still active worldwide, Madí remains one of the few mid-century avant-gardes with unbroken continuity, insisting that art be autonomous, concrete, and ludic.

Defining characteristics

• Cut-out, irregularly shaped supports that abolish the rectangular frame and its illusion of depth
• Flat, sharply defined areas of colour with no modelling or atmospheric perspective
• Non-figurative, non-representational composition: the work's reality ends in the object
• Three-dimensional, articulated, and sometimes mechanical or kinetic elements
• Unusual materials - Plexiglas, neon, water, metal - folded into the work
• Playful, inventive spirit: games, transformation, and deliberate ambiguity

Key figures

• Gyula Kosice (1924-2016) — Hungarian-Argentine co-founder who named the movement and pioneered hydraulic and neon sculpture
• Carmelo Arden Quin (1913-2010) — Uruguayan co-founder and theorist of the Madí manifesto, later the movement's leader in Paris
• Rhod Rothfuss (1920-1991) — Uruguayan painter-theorist of the shaped canvas and irregular frame

Example works

• Röyi — Gyula Kosice (1944)
• Coplanal — Gyula Kosice (1947)
• 3 círculos rojos — Rhod Rothfuss (1948)

Sources

• Madí - Wikipedia encyclopedia
• Concrete art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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