Exhibitions
The MNAV (National Museum of Art) celebrates the first Carmelo Arden Quin retrospective in Uruguay.
The Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) is exhibiting the temporary exhibition "Carmelo Arden Quin, in the Fabric of Constructive Art" from July 25th to September 29th, curated by María Cristina Rossi. The exhibition offers a journey through the transformations in Carmelo Arden Quin's artistic and literary output, based on his travels between Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Paris. The narrative begins with his early connection with Joaquín Torres García and moves on to his River Plate experience with the MADI group—along with Rhod Rothfuss, Gyula Kosice, and Martín Blaszko, among others. It also addresses his Parisian years, where he relaunched the movement and forged ties with European, American, and Latin American artists, leading to the creation of the International MADI Movement in the 1980s.
Carmelo Arden Quin (Rivera, 1913 – Savigny-sur-Orge, 2010) was a painter, sculptor, poet, and writer, and one of the most singular voices of 20th-century Latin American abstract art. Trained under the guidance of Joaquín Torres-García, he embraced constructivism and geometry from an early age, although he soon decided to push their boundaries, breaking the rigidity of the frame to open the canvas to new possibilities. In 1944, with an avant-garde spirit, he participated in the creation of the magazine Arturo , a founding gesture that would mark the history of abstract art in the region.
This is the first major retrospective dedicated to Carmelo Arden Quin in Uruguay, a long-awaited event that restores the international dimension of his work to the artist's native country. The exhibition was conceived in close collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, the institution that promoted its regional tour. After being presented in 2023 at the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago, Chile, and more recently at the Atchugarry Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) in Maldonado, the exhibition now arrives in Montevideo to offer the public a comprehensive look at one of the protagonists of Latin American abstract art.
The collection of pieces that make up Carmelo Arden Quin, within the framework of constructive art , brings together works from both the artist's own legacy and prominent Uruguayan public and private collections. Paintings, sculptures, objects, and documents are interwoven in a journey that allows us to appreciate not only the breadth of his output, but also the relevance of an aesthetic thought that transcended borders and eras.
The exhibition at the MNAV reveals that, for Carmelo Arden Quin, art was not just a territory of aesthetic creation, but a true way of life: a network of connections, exchanges, and constantly evolving quests. His legacy demonstrates that geometry can be open to play, that color is capable of awakening the imagination, and that every work, whether word or form, becomes an act of collective invention.
