Mineral Flower

“Flor Mineral” (Mineral Flower) is an example of a production that transits between Concretism and Neoconcretism. While the former valued the abstract, the purity of the form worked with rationality, objectivity and exclusion of aggregate feelings, the latter proposed the resumption of subjectivity, of art not only as an object, but as a vehicle of expression. The artist Franz Weissmann was on both sides of this clash that happened in the 1950s. Franz Weissmann was born in Knittelfeld, Austria, in 1911. He moved to Brazil when he was eleven years old. He started studying art in São Paulo in the late 1930s. He studied molding and casting techniques with August Zamoski (1893-1970). He began to produce figurative works, but in the 1950s he gradually began to produce abstract geometric works within the concept of Concretism, using cutouts and folds of sheet metal for this purpose. Later he started to defend Neoconcretism, being one of the founders of the Neoconcreto Group in 1959, in Rio de Janeiro. He made several sculptures for public spaces such as Praça da Sé, in São Paulo, and Parque da Catacumba, in Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 2005.