Background
Carmelo Arden Quin was born on March 16, 1913 in Rivera, Uruguay.
Carmelo Arden Quin was born on March 16, 1913 in Rivera, Uruguay.
By the end of 1937 Carmelo settled in Buenos Aires where he frequented avant-guard artists and studied Philosophy and Literature at the University.
Carmelo Arden Quin created his first painting "Naturel Morte Cubiste" or "Cubist Still Life" in 1934 in Rivera. The following year, in 1935, the artist met Joaquín Torres García during a conference at the Theosophist Society seat, and though he initially adopted his aesthetic guidelines, in 1936 he made his first non-orthogonal paintings, transgressing the traditional limits of the frame confinement. He exhibited those works at the Casa de España, Montevideo, within the framework of a demonstration supporting the Spanish Republic.
In 1941 the painter became one of the founders of a bimonthly newspaper, El Universitario, where he published his political and aesthetic ideas. He was also a member of the editing group for Arturo magazine, issued only once in 1944.
As a member of Madí Group, Arden Quin participated in the four exhibitions hosted by the Galería Van Riel and by the Escuela Libre de Artes Plásticas Altamira (Free School of Plastic Arts Altamira) in 1946. He also took part in the First International Madí Exhibition, organized at the Ateneo de Montevideo, Uruguay. Quin exhibited polygonal-framed works, movable and co-planar structures, object-pictures, and concave-convex works.
Two year later, in 1948, Carmelo travelled to Paris, where he frequented Michel Seuphor, Marcelle Cahn, Auguste Herbin, Jean Arp, Georges Braque and Francis Picabia, among other vanguard artists. There he had various exhibitions and participated in the Salon des Realités Nouvelles.
Upon his return to Paris, Carmelo continued with his work, and during this period he introduced collage and découpage to his works, resources that the painter exclusively used until 1971, when he retook painting.
In 1962 Quin created the Ailleurs magazine, and during that decade he participated in the Concrete Poetry movement.
Quin's works were exhibited at Galerie Charley Chevalier, Galerie Quincampoix, Galerie Downtown in Paris and many others.
Carmelo Arden Quin was mostly known as a co-founder of the international artistic movement "Madí".
In the 1990’s Quin was included in the MOMA exhibit of "Latin American Artists of the twentieth Century" and was named one of the 50 most important artists of our time by an international critic review board assembled to select art for the Olympics in Seoul and Barcelona.
