OTRA FIGURACION

Evoke without mimetic representation. Transcend the abstract / figuration binary. Employ expression and reject decoration.

These three principals summarize the Otra Figuración movement (or another figuration). This was a group of four artists, operating between 1961 and 1965 in Argentina, who studied the human body in both drawings and paintings.  It was started by the artist Luis Felipe Noe.

They were interested primarily in freedom of expression. And they wanted this expression to be free of cultural strictures and constructs.  They considered chaos to be a good thing. And they freed themselves to use the drawn line, the drip, collage and assemblage in their quest for their freedom.

It is somewhat difficult to determine, exactly, which drawings that you see on the web were specifically done as part of this movement.  However, this link takes you to a Google Images page with the search Otra Figuración Drawings.  some of the images are of work done during this time period by these artists.

In previous pages, we have considered other visual idealists as we add meaning and context to Transparent Drawing.  These include the Futurists, New Measurement Group, Cubists, etc.  All of them were concerned with the rejection of representation, operation between abstraction and figuration, and the search for new expression.  All of these precepts are of central preoccupation in these pages as well.

A few pages ago, we even saw Raphael’s questioning / rejecting abject representation on the page titled Raphael’s Pantheon.  It is beneficial for us to realize that the quest in these pages is nothing new.  Humans have shared our concerns since the beginning of Art.

We now have the addition of Otra Figuratión to our list of heroes and pathfinders.