Eduardo Mac Entyre Co-Founds the Arte Generativo Group

Arte Concreto's rich legacy of geometric aesthetics in South America (Brazil in particular) from the 1950s reflected the change of a continent rapidly industrializing. But by the early 1960s, the movement's rigidity, "focus[ing] solely on the principles of color, line, and shape," according to MoMA, began frustrating artists like Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape. These artists took the movement in more experimental directions in Brazil.

But this experimental rejection of Arte Concreto's rigidity has roots in Brazil's neighbor Argentina as well. Buenos Aires native Eduardo Mac Entyre co-founded the transformative Arte Generativo group alongside Miguel Ángel Vidal. The collector Ignacio Pirovano suggested the name.

This group's view of "generative" differs (but is commonly mistaken) from this Timeline's. We mean art using autonomous systems. Mac Entyre meant his more dynamic visual language that pulsated with motion. The group chose the term “generative” because it aptly described their intention to transform static elements into dynamic, evolving forms. Mac Entyre vividly demonstrates the group’s signature aesthetic in his Seis Formas en Dos Circunferencias (1966).