Présentation de l'éditeur
The catalogue is published on the occasion of the first individual exhibition of Georges Vantongerloo in Spain. The catalogue reveals the grounding of his work in the re-conceptualisation of pictorial and sculptural space that marked the abstract tendencies in art of the early 20th century. In the 1920s an important part of the Vantongerloo´s investigation was centred on colour as physical and perceptive phenomenon. Later, Vantongerloo will conceive his works according to strictly geometric rules, algebraic afterwards, to turn, thus, into the founder of the mathematical thought in art in our epoch. Genuine pioneer in the abstract sculpture field, the artist will continue, after 1945, proposing peculiar versions of that kind of sculpture, abandoning all the reference to a built geometry, and opening to a subjective approach to the universe of cosmology.
Biographie de l'auteur
Georges Vantongerloo (November 24, 1886, Antwerp-October 5, 1965, Paris) was a Belgian abstract sculptor and painter and founding member of the De Stijl group. From 1905 to 1909 Vantongerloo studied Fine Art at the Fine Art Academies in Antwerp and Brussels. Conscripted into World War I, he was wounded in a gas attack and discharged from the army in 1914. During 1916 he met Theo Van Doesburg and the following year he was a co-signator if the first manifesto of the De Stijl group. Vantongerloo moved to Paris in 1927 and began a correspondence with the Belgian Prime Minister, Henri Jaspar in relation to the design of a bridge over the Scheldt at Antwerp. In 1930 he joined the Cercle et Carre group in Paris and a year later he was a founding member of Abstraction-Creation.
