(b. 1934), and Rogelio Polesello (b. 1939), who alternated between work in two dimensions and work in three—the most significant career development of the 1960s. A place apart should be assigned to the work of Julian Althabe (19111975), a true forerunner of the purist inclination to simplification, and to Marcelo Bonevardi (b. 1929) (p. 104). Bonevardi's compositions, like the sculpture in relief of the Uruguayan Gonzalo Fonseca (b. 1922), evidence a somewhat different approach, akin to Torres-Garcia's Constructivism. He tended, however, toward the creation of objects that can stand on their own, albeit strongly impregnated with archaisms. The prize awarded to Julio Le Pare (b. 1928) at the Venice Biennial in 1966 marked a high point of recognition for these geometric and kinetic artists, whose creative power was duly acknowledged by the critic Damian Bayon at the same time that he stressed the rational character of their work. On the occasion of the exhibition the Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts organized in 1964 under the name "Instability," he termed them "creative artists who make use in their work of geometric shapes, transparencies, and glitter, artists for whom new materials, capable of producing new effects, serve as vehicles of expression."2 To all one might apply the famous words of the Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes: they made an entrance on the international stage, but, owing to the cultural pressures exerted by the milieu and the singular nature of their individual personalities, they found themselves in a state of "involuntary independence." The work of geometric artists in the rational-decorative line was unfailingly marked by perfection of craftsmanship, a virtue required by their visual mode of expression. Once Mathias Goeritz (b. 1915) had stirred the Mexican milieu to life in the 1950s, Mexican geometric art developed similar characteristics. The Satellite City Towers that Goeritz planned in conjunction with the architect Luis Barragan date from 1957 and 1958. They marked the first step in the propagation of geometric art "after long decades of figurative and subjective trends," as the Peruvian critic Juan Acha recognizes. It is true that the pioneer work of Carlos Merida had set a standard for Mexican art in his period, but it had no repercussion, probably because of its "chamber work" quality, whereas Goeritz's public activity and his early adherence to Minimalism were to have a decisive influence on younger generations. The publication in 1977 by the National University of Mexico of El geometrismo mexicano, written by Jorge Alberto Manrique, Ida Rodriguez Prampolini, Juan Acha, Xavier Moyssen, and Teresa del Conde, gives clear evidence of the official recognition the movement had attained. From the time of his arrival in Mexico in 1949, Goeritz engaged in a didactic effort, introducing industrial design into the country as the basis of visual education. In 1953 he produced a work he called the ElEco Experimental Museum, a dramatic piece of architecture featuring a metal serpent four and a half meters high. It was with the Satellite City Towers, however, that his driving force came to be fully recognized. Varying between 37 and 57 meters in height, the five triangular-based towers, painted white, red, and yellow at the time of their con-
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DECADES OF CHANGE • 103