Carmelo Arden Quin

Carmelo Arden Quin was a Uruguayan artist. Arden Quin's primary focuses were painting and poetry. From a young age, Arden Quin was an ambitious and idealistic artist. Today, Arden Quin is most recognized for his co-founding of the Madí movement, which began in Argentina but ultimately became an international movement. Arden Quin's commitment to invention, rather than replication or representation, drove his relentless pursuit of new forms and ideas.

Before Arden Quin moved to Buenos Aires during the late 1930s, he lived primarily in Montevideo, Uruguay, and also spent some time in Brazil. In Montevideo, Arden Quin frequented the cafés, or peñas, where painters and writers of the city gathered and discussed their works. In early 1935, a friend of Arden Quin invited him to a lecture at the Theosophical Society of Montevideo by Joaquín Torres-García, an esteemed and exceedingly well-traveled artist and the founder of the Universalismo movement, otherwise known as Universal Constructivism. He eagerly accepted the invitation and, after the lecture, Arden Quin's friend introduced the passionate young poet and artist to Torres-García, who invited Arden Quin to visit him in his studio. Torres-García would provide invaluable guidance and inspiration for Arden Quin, and would directly influence Arden Quin's development of Madí.

In 1937, Arden Quin left his home country for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Immediately, Arden Quin immersed himself in the culture of the city. As in Montevideo, he founded like-minded, motivated artists and political activists in the cafés, or tertulias, of Buenos Aires. Arden Quin also began to attend university art classes. Through his classes at the university and his time in the tertulias, the young artist and poet perpetually expanded his connections.

In this time his incubating plans for starting his own movement compelled him to recruit potential members. At the university Arden Quin would forge a friendship with poet Edgar Bayley. On a brief trip home to Uruguay in 1939 for an art exhibition, he would notice a young painter named Rhod Rothfuss. While working in a pencil factory in 1940, Arden Quin would meet a young Hungarian immigrant named Fernando Fallik, who would later be known to the art world as Gyula Kosice. These are among the few talents who would contribute to Arden Quin's efforts in the publication of Arturo, a precursor to Madí.

Early in the 1940s, Arden Quin was provided the opportunity to travel upriver from Buenos Aires deep into the rain forest to seek a job opportunity with an Argentine-Brazilian coffee company that was attempting to expand operations into neighboring Paraguay. Always eager for adventure and the prospect of "money-making schemes", Arden Quin boarded a steamboat, and found himself in Asunción, Paraguay, three days later. Though he never found employment with the coffee company, Arden Quin's experiences in Paraguay stimulated Arden Quin's creativity, and galvanized an immensely productive year of his life. Upon returning, he would draft his first manifesto and a significant part of a long prose poem, both of which would be featured in his journal Arturo. In addition, he painted Les Formes Noires, a series of six paintings that would be considered some of the most mysterious of his entire career. These works, heavily influenced by his trip up the river, and by a visit to the Natural Sciences Museum in Argentina, feature black oil "mask" shapes on cardboard with a single "eye" in each.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023