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Carmelo Arden Quin: When Art Jumped Out of its Cage

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Whether or not you are familiar with Arden Quin, this wonderful, colorful biography will have you entranced within the first few pages. I became familiar with the MADI movement after visiting the MADI Museum in Dallas which was designed and curated by Volf ROITMAN, head of MADI International and one of its most talented members.

Arden Quin is the founder of the MADI movement which was publicly launched in 1946 in Buenos Aires. He then moved to Paris, where he has been performing his magic ever since. The MADI movement now includes 80 artists from all over the world such as Volf ROITMAN, Octavio HERRERA, Reale FRANGI and Saverio CECERE.

This book not only makes great reading, but it is a wonderful coffee table book. Arden Quin's life is pure madness wrapped in genius. Worth every penny!

Written in a breezy, readable style, Carmelo Arden Quin: When Art
Jumped Out of Its Cage, evokes the hyperreality of Uruguay and
Argentina of the 1930s and forties -- from From Quin's youth on in the Uruguayan frontier (where his father was gunned down just before he was born) and where he started painting while in his teens, to his Paraguayan rainforest and Brazilian voyages and his artistic apprenticeship in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. Quin maintains that that within twenty-four hours of discovering the art of Wassily Kandinsky he decided to devote his life to non-representational art. In 1930s Argentina, stifled by provincialism and the heavy-handed rule of colonels and dictators, this took took considerable courage. In 1944, with his friend the poet Edgar Bayley, Quin founded Arturo (named for
Artur Rimbaud), a magazine of experimental concrete poetry that
championed pure invention. From such experiments arose the MADI
movement, which sought to liberate art of the constraints of the
rectangular picture frame, producing irregularly shaped, articulated and pierced paintings and sculptures that rendered space as an integral part of the work, often incorporating planes and colors -- a joyous and playful art -- MADI LUDICO. Was MADI a nonsense word like dada? A private symbol? or the English for "mad" "eye"? Who can say?

Inevitably, the restless Quin migrated to France, where, barring some temporary returns to Argentina, he still resides. MADI art thus entered the international sphere. In recounting Quin's years abroad, Goodman, who herself lived for years in France and knows the scene intimately, deftly and wittily negotiates the ideosyncratic personalities, political complexities, feuds, love affairs, and artistic ins and outs of post-World War II bohemian Paris. Making appearances in the story are Tomas Maldonado, Francis Picabia, Matta, Calder, Herbin, Vantongerloo, Volf Roitman, Fonseca, Victor Vaserely, and many others.

In 2003 a wonderful MADI museum opened in Dallas, Texas, housed in a building that is itself a fantastic MADI creation (the work of Uruguayan-born Volf Roitman) and displaying the works of MADI artists from all over the world, but chiefly South America. Every artlover should make a point of visiting it when they go to Dallas.

Note: With its wealth of illustrations in black and white and color and almost 500 pages of text, comprising closely researched
documentation, personal anecdotes, and an exhaustive chronology, this book is well worth the price. It will be a treasured collector's item for art lovers and an essential resource for scholars.

Shelley Goodman has written a scholarly book that is also fun to read. A rare combination. I couldn't put it down. I learned so much about the artist , his contemporaries and art in general. That particular period in Paris and the whole art scene is so vividly described one becomes totally nostalgic. A must for neophytes and confirmed Art lovers. Beautiful illustrations.

Je connais l oeuvre de Carmelo Arden Quin depuis longtemps et ce livre est une parfaite biographie à la fois pleine humour, de couleurs, et d'anecdotes personnelles. j aime !