The Indians

The painting "Los indios" features a structure divided by a black-lined partition inserted in an irregular parallelepiped edge. As it was usual in artists influenced by Joaquín Torres García, Carmelo Arden Quin applies here the golden ratio system—a traditional practice he passed on to his friend Martín Blaszko. Using a bright-colored palette including primary colors, Arden Quin resorts to chromatic gradations and patterns of horizontal, vertical, wedged-shaped and dotted lines. Furthermore, the cutout edge in this work reveals his attempt to disrupt the orthogonality of the frame that related to ideas from naturalism, whereby painting was conceived as a window. This approach appeared in Rhod Rothfuss’ founding text "El marco: un problema de plástica actual" [The Frame: A Problem in Art Today] published in Arturo magazine, and stressed the need to incorporate the frame in the composition. The edge of the canvas must play an active role on the plastic creation so that the artwork could “begin and end in itself,” as Rothfuss claimed. This oil painting by Arden Quin displays the frame as a wide fringe painted in the same chromatic key than the rest of the piece.