Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Far from Good Design: Social Responsibility and Waldemar Cordeiro’s Early Theory of Form

2020; UMR ESPACE et UMR LISST; Volume: 15; Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/artelogie.4374

2115-6395

Adele Nelson,

History, Culture, and Society

By examining Waldemar Cordeiro’s theory of form in little studied and well-known texts, including a newly uncovered series of talks, of the late 1940s–early 1950s, this article revises the conflation of Cordeiro’s thinking, and the aims of Brazilian Concretism, with Max Bill’s proposals and reveals that Cordeiro closely linked his visions of abstraction and Concrete art to social responsibility. It also sheds new light on the motivations and context for Cordeiro’s deployment of Konrad Fielder’s ideas and his dialogues and disagreements with Mário Pedrosa and Sérgio Milliet.