Judith Lauand was born to Lebanese immigrants and spent her childhood and youth in Araraquara, an important economic and cultural centre in the countryside of São Paulo. Acervo 290, concreto 18 (1954) is part of the initial period of Lauand’s Concretist experimentation, after she had put aside her academic and figurative beginnings. Here the artist works with the relationship between shapes and planes of colour and develops complex structures from simple figures, repeated systematically. The combination of elements sometimes breaks down the figures and sometimes creates new polygons and more organic structures, bringing rhythm and dynamism to the canvas. The triangle and lozenge take centre stage, unfolding and reappearing in different ways, lending a discreet and elegant character to the internal movement of the composition. This mathematical dynamic is tempered by the use of colours and their contrasts and by the solitary presence of a circle at the bottom right of the canvas, creating an unsuspected vanishing point in a typically Lauandian formal operation.
This is the first time the work of Judith Lauand is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Fernando Olivia
