Abraham Palatnik

In
1951, the artist produced his first Aparelho
cinecromático,
a milestone of kinetic art worldwide. Using motors and lights in its structure
(the first work of this series was still jury rigged with strings inside of
it), the work enlarged the term “sculpture” in the history of art while it also
produced a fruitful dialogue with painting. At the time, art critic Mário
Pedrosa stated that Palatnik was producing a painting with light. That same
year, the organizers of the 1st Bienal de São Paulo judged the work for its
possible inclusion in the exhibition, and decided in the negative, “because it
wasn’t painting, nor sculpture, there was no way to classify it.”

But some days later, due to the nonappearance of the delegation from Japan, the artist’s Cinecromático azul e roxo em primeiro movimento was accepted to participate in the Bienal, where it went on to win an honorable mention from the international jury.

If in his Aparelhos cinecromáticos and Objetos cinéticos the movement and participation take place autonomously in relation to the spectator, the same is not true of his paintings of a constructive bent, since the spectator’s mobility in relation to them causes a dynamic re-dimensioning of the idea of movement in direct opposition to the supposed rigidity of a painting.

In
1964, Palatnik began to work on his Objetos
cinéticos, constructed
of metallic rods or wires bearing geometrically shaped wooden plaques at their
ends that are moved slowly by motors and, in some cases, by electromagnets.
While in the Aparelhos cinecromáticos the electromechanical part is
not apparent to the spectator, in the Objetos
cinéticos part of this
structure is visible. This series established his work as one of the most
important in the world — approximating it to that of artists such as Calder,
-Moholy-Nagy, Miró and Soto, while it blazed a new path of research in regard
to the practice of constructive art in Brazil.

His work gave rise to forms in space by way of movement and enlarged the borders, now fluid, between painting and sculpture. These movements possess a time distinct from that of day-to-day life, since they offer us the possibility for rest and delicateness; we are suspended in time and space by the enchantment that these seductive and hypnotic objects reveal to us.

Technology operates in Palatnik’s work in a very particular way. The artist engages in manual craftwork, as is evident in the use of materials such as glass, string, cardboard and metallic rods. In this series these inexpensive elements, readily available in the retail market, nevertheless carry out a procedure of high poetic value.

A place of invention, it has furthermore, and above all, been the stage of artistic operations that culminated in a fundamental legacy for kinetic art, as is the case of the artist’s celebrated Aparelhos cinecromáticos and Objetos cinéticos.

The kinetic possibilities were pushed beyond the potentials of light, to also involve research into the qualities of movement and time. In 1959 he produced Mobilidade IV; in 1962 he created the board game Quadrado perfeito, and in 1965 he executed Objeto lúdico.

These are games that display the two interests of the artist at that moment: an increasingly diversified research into kinetic qualities, coupled with an exploration of multiplicity and the dissemination of this production within society. In the 1950s and ’60s he also developed a series of inventions linked to industry.

These include a machine for splitting the husks of babaçu coconuts, devices for feeding raw material into machines used in the production of fish meal, and a special kind of canvas at the request of friend and fellow artist Ivan Serpa, which allowed for better absorption of the paint, maintaining the colors in their original hue and preventing the painted surface from cracking.

The painting acquired a light volume which helped to produce an optical effect that balanced the “precarious technology” of the string with a rigorous and sensitive research into kinetic art and the possibilities for the expansion of both form and color through a double movement: of the lines and of the viewer.