Ritmo negro [Black Rhythm]

Primary Ramón Vergara Grez (Mejillones, Chile, 1923–Santiago, Chile, 2012)

NationalityChilean, South America

Date1963

MediumOil on linen canvas

DimensionsFramed: 30 1/2 × 64 in. (77.5 × 162.6 cm)
Sight: 29 11/16 × 63 1/8 in. (75.4 × 160.4 cm)

Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Albion Wesley Patterson, 1983.152

Keywords

nonrepresentational

Rights Statement

IN COPYRIGHT

Collection AreaLatin American Art

Object number1983.152

On View

On view

Locations

exhibition BMA, Gallery, C7 - Susman Galleries

Collection Highlight

Latin American Art: 1950–1969

Label Text

Web Comments

Ramón Vergara Grez studied art in Chile, Brazil, and Italy, and by the time he returned home to Santiago, he had become a vocal proponent of artistic renovation. In the early 1950s, he formed part of the Grupo de los Cinco [Group of Five], who repudiated as outdated the prevailing artistic modes of figurative representation. In 1955, Vergara Grez founded the Grupo Rectángulo [Rectangle Group], an artistic collective advocating for nonfigurative art based on “concepts of order and geometry.” Such concepts instill Ritmo negro. Here, a subtle, syncopated rhythm structures a series of abstract elements, which are almost symmetrically mirrored across a horizontal axis, except for the incomplete circle on the far left. Vergara Grez painted line and shape to echo each other throughout this composition, creating a balance of forms rhythmically aligned in space. His Grupo Rectángulo became known as the Movimiento Forma y Espacio [Form and Space Movement] in 1965, when it began to promote the use of abstract artistic languages to impact society more directly in an increasingly mechanized world.