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Suite: Olympic Centennial Untitled
Carmelo Arden Quin1991
The Olympic Museum
Lausanne, Switzerland
Geometrical composition with the Olympic symbol. Arden Quinn used only the elementary geometrical shapes and the primary colours.
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Details
- Title: Suite: Olympic Centennial Untitled
- Creator Lifespan: 16 March 1913
- Creator Nationality: Uruguayan
- Creator Gender: Male
- Creator Birth Place: Riveira, Uruguay
- Date Created: 1991
- Location Created: Paris
- Physical Dimensions: w710 x h1010 cm (Complete)
- Painter: Carmelo Arden Quin
- Description: Signed: A 91 on the right. From the 50 original works of the Olympic Centennial Suite, the IOC printed 250 lithographs of each work, all measuring 63/90cm, on Arches vellum paper (270 grams), signed by the artist and numbered.
- Collection information: The "Olympic Centennial Suite ", brings together 50 works by international artists who are representative of the variety of contemporary artistic tendencies. It was created on the occasion of the centenary of the foundation of the International Olympic Committee in 1994. For the choice of the works, the IOC brought in two prestigious French art critics, Gérard Xuriguera and Francis Parent. More than two years were necessary to constitute this Suite, with the aim of representing, in just 50 works, the multiplicity of creative work produced over the last five decades, from the figurative to the abstract, from hyperrealism to minimalism, from the new figurative school to abstract expressionism, as well as geometrism, conceptual art, and body art. It was decided that each international artist selected should create a work on a two-dimensional support. Some of these artists, aware of the importance of the message of the Olympic Movement, have rendered this spirit a special homage, while always remaining faithful to their own personal style. This "Suite" can be qualified as the jewel of the art collection of The Olympic Museum.
- Artistic school or movement: From 1919 to 1930 Carmelo Arden Quin was educated in Marxist institutions in Brazil, and while a student, he became interested in Marxism. In 1930 he travelled in Argentina and Brazil. While a law student, he began to study painting in 1932 with the Catalan artist, Emilio Sans. In 1935, Carmelo Arden Quin met his mentor, the Uruguayan sculptor Joaquín Torres Garcia, who was directly influenced by Piet Mondrian and Michel Seufor. Quin became immersed in constructivism in Buenos Aires where, in 1944, he joined other intellectuals to create the magazine “Arturo”. By late 1946, Arden Quin was in Paris, turning out work in his new shapes and curves. He experimented with many different colour combinations and also made movable wooden pieces. He returned to Argentina in 1954, but went back definitively to Paris one year later, where he continued with his work introducing collage and découpage. Quin’s personal style is full of contrasting colours and geometric patterns. Some of the main characteristic concepts in Quin’s work are the irregular shaped frame, his “formes galbées”, alternating concave and convex forms mainly in woodwork. He created mobiles and works on highly polished enamelled wood he called plastique blanche. He did also many coplanals, which involved more than one piece of work of art, sometimes attached, sometimes not, and sometimes movables. The work of Carmelo Arden Quin reflected the influence, or rather the traces, of different changes in the field of plastic art over the 20th century. In the 1990s, Arden Quin was included in the MOMA exhibition “Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century”.
- Type: Paintings
- Rights: International Olympic Committee, 2005, ©IOC/G.Peter
- Medium: Pastel on paper
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