The Argentine Avant-Garde: Experiments With Space in the Works of Pío Collivadino and Florencio Molina Campos

This paper discusses the concept of avant-garde in arts in two aspects. On the one hand, avant-garde does not always manifest itself as a homogeneous, programmatic and «conscious» movement that defies the long-established processes in the artistic system, which is already part of the canonical concept of avant-garde. On the other hand, the avant-garde can be defined through the prism of cases that, in an episodic way, contradict the ways in which art had been understood in Argentina until then. At the same time, the works studied were part of a debate on the avant-garde that was taking place at the same time as the national system of modern painting was being developed. Two works by Pío (Alberto) Collivadino, painted in 1924 and 1935 respectively, and another by Florencio Molina Campos painted in 1949, show that these artists set the picture plane with a view to creating a total work of art that overcomes the divisions that existed in the art at the time. In the case of Pío Collivadino, he relied on his relationship with the arts, namely painting and performing arts, and with crafts, whereas Florencio Molina Campos sought to combine painting, literature, cinema and audiovisual arts in his work. In this sense, it is argued that these works contribute to the constitution of the national avant-garde.