Samson Flexor and Atelier Abstração
Samson Flexor (1907–1971) was the leader and teacher of the São Paulo-based workshop school and artists’ organization known as Atelier Abstração (1951). The Rumanian-born artist relocated in 1948 from France to Brazil, where he immediately began exhibiting his paintings, which at the time demonstrated the influence of the School of Paris. Shortly after settling in São Paulo, the artist changed course, and his work reflected geometric abstraction. This shift was influenced in part by Flexor observing the vertiginous growth and development rate of São Paulo as a city turned to the future. His compositions, based on virtual volumes generated by sequences of finely modulated color, set the standard for many other abstract artists of the period. The program adopted by Atelier Abstração gave students freer license to exercise their personal style; this latitude set the program apart from the more restrictive guidelines set forth by the Grupo ruptura, for example.
The majority of this text accompanied the exhibition Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection, presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from May 20 to September 23, 2007. The exhibition was organized by Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas.
Our sincere thanks go to Adolpho Leirner, Mari Carmen Ramírez, María C. Gaztambide, Marty Stein, Matthew Lawson, Flora Brooks, and the Google Cultural Institute.
Design: Beatriz Olivetti and María Beatriz McGreger, ICAA-MFAH
