Raul Lozza was an Argentinian painter, designer, theorist, journalist and draughtsman, who represented Concrete Art movement. Lozza was concerned with the relational theory of color and on the concept of a color field, advocating the succession of abstract geometric shapes, cut and pasted to the plane and structured from the severity of the straight line.
Background
Ethnicity:
Lozza's father had emigrated from the Lombardy region of Italy and his mother was the daughter of Italian immigrants.
Raul Lozza was born on October 27, 1911 in Alberti, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was the son of Emma (Righetti) Lozza and Rafael Carlos Lozza, a designer and painter. Lozza also had two brothers — Rafael Obdulio Lozza and Rembrandt Van Dyck Lozza.
Career
After school, Raul Lozza worked on a farm during harvest time. Some time later, Lozza started to work as a painter and paper-cutter, setting up a business with his brothers.
In 1929, the painter together with his brothers moved to Buenos Aires in order to get further funding to study painting in Italy. However, the 1930 Argentine coup d'état made it impossible.
In December 1930, Lozza put on the play "La sombra de la nada" at the Teatro Roma de Alberti in collaboration with Vicente Barbieri and Juan Ferreyra Basso.
In 1932, Raul published an article called "A propósito del centenario de Goethe" in a periodical "La Zona". In 1937, the painter fell ill with tuberculosis, but continued to work. During that time, he started lingerie business called "Lingerie Femenil".
Between 1944 and 1945, Lozza was part of the group, that published the magazine Contrapunto, which focused on visual arts and literature. He also had ties with the group that published the magazine Arturo, sharing with its members the need to revolutionize the visual arts.
In 1949, Lozza published perceptismo’s manifesto and presented the exhibition Raul Lozza: Primera Exposicion de arte perceptista (Galería Van Riel, Buenos Aires), which included mural-sized paintings. During the following decades, Lozza dedicated himself to practicing and spreading Perceptismo through solo exhibitions.
Being a member of the Communist Party, Lozza was imprisoned for a month after protests of the treatment of political prisoners. Lozza continued to be politically active, publishing illustrations and writings in the anti-fascist journal "Socorro Rojo" and "La República".
Views
For Lozza, the creative core lies more in the project and in the idea, than in the realisation of the final work.
Membership
Lozza was the member of the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención.
Connections
In 1938, Lozza married his first wife, with whom he had a son — Arturo Lozza. Some time later, the couple divorced. Antonia Belizan, a painter, was Raul's second wife. They had a son — Carlos Raúl Lozza.