to restore the vital—subjective, expressive, and phenomenological—dimension dismissed by their counterparts while in the process generating unheard of proposals. Moreover, working under different sociopolitical conditions, the South American constructive groups embraced the concrete notion of “structure” as the starting point for their non-representational work. This concept evolved from a “passive” (pure and objective) organizing principle to one that was “active” (subjective). The structures of these works, then, were “alive;” their life emanating from the unity and coherence of their internal elements. The presence of this trait across all these South American proposals confirms the transnational character of such manifestations as well as their deep-seated inversion of the hegemonic model.
ZZ Intersecting Modernities Beginning in 1964-65—under the threat of nuclear war and the activation of urban and rural guerrillas—a series of military coups throughout the Southern region of our continent branded the shift toward the hard-right wing Establishment. The result was the de-activation of the “rational concrete” paradigm born in a sociopolitical local reading of Developmental-ism in force at that time. In art, the alterations would manifest themselves in the move away from Concrete Art manifestations to Pop, Op, Abstract-Expressionist, and Informal-ist tendencies— the “cryptic commitment” at the kernel of Latin American conceptual practices included. Indeed, by the early-60s, leading concretistas like Waldemar Cordeiro, Luis Sacilotto, and Mauricio Nogueira Lima had abandoned the concrete art idiom in favor of Pop or Op-Art-based forms of expression coined by the former as “Popcretos”. Despite their eventual demise, the cases here discussed not only embody the complexity and contradictions of Concrete Art manifestations in leading enclaves of South America, but their pertinence for our present. Indeed, it could be argued that despite the radical artistic and ideological contributions of Neo-concretism, it was the concrete point of view that was ultimately assimilated as a leading matrix of our contemporary present. That is, it can be duly named as relevant if we take into account the dominance of technology-driven neo-positivism that permeates every level of our everyday lives: well exemplified by an ongo181