Reason and Existence — Concrete Art and Informalism in Uruguay (1947–1970)

MACA — Fundación Pablo Atchugarry presents Reason and Existence: Concrete Art and Informalism in Uruguay (1947–1970), an exhibition conceived especially for the Foundation’s spaces that offers a new perspective on a key chapter in modern Uruguayan art.

The exhibition brings together a previously unseen selection of works by 26 Uruguayan artists from three generations and places in dialogue two seemingly opposing ways of understanding abstraction: on the one hand, an art of reason, linked to Concrete Art, associated with impersonal visuality, industrial technique, and constructive order; on the other, an art of existence, connected to Informalism, in which the surface of the canvas becomes a territory of radical freedom, materiality, gesture, and subjective expression.

Set within the context of the postwar period and the crisis of the so-called “classical Uruguay,” the exhibition explores how, in the local context, abstraction shifted from embracing faith in reason, industry, and progress toward an existential sensibility shaped by the expansion of consumer society, political and cultural transformations, and growing unease with contemporary reality.

From rigorous geometric compositions to dense surfaces charged with matter and texture, Reason and Existence demonstrates that in Uruguay, Concrete Art and Informalism were not mere reflections of European models. Instead, they developed within their own temporal framework, maintaining a productive tension between one another while sharing a desire to integrate into a universal contemporary avant-garde, and at the same time experimenting—through abstract language—with new ways of escaping contingent reality.

Curated by Manuel Neves, the exhibition proposes a journey that reveals how reason and existence emerge, within the fabric of mid-20th-century Uruguayan art, as two poles of a single artistic pursuit.

The exhibition opens on December 27, 2025, at MACA — Fundación Pablo Atchugarry (Route 104, km 4.5, Manantiales).