Grupo Frente

Grupo Frente was a Brazilian art association of the 1950s formed by artists who rejected the figuration and nationalist rhetoric of the dominant modernist style of Brazilian painting. The group emerged in Rio de Janeiro around 1954 around the artist and teacher Ivan Serpa and brought together artists interested in geometric abstraction and Concrete art. At various times it included Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Aluísio Carvão, Abraham Palatnik, Franz Weissmann and others. The members of Grupo Frente looked to European traditions of Constructivism and Concrete art, in particular the ideas of Max Bill, and sought to create a rational, non-objective art based on pure forms, colour and geometry. At the same time the association had no rigid doctrinal programme and allowed considerable freedom of individual inquiry. Grupo Frente was an important stage in the development of Brazilian Concrete art and directly preceded the emergence of Neo-Concretism in the late 1950s, in which former members of the group, notably Clark and Oiticica, played a leading role.