This text presents the Luiz Sacilotto retrospective held at the MAM-SP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo) in 1980. Décio Pignatari, a concrete poet, theoretician of semiotics, and art critic, calls his readers’ attention to those prototypical characteristics of Sacilotto’s sculptural and pictorial work, which was based on the repetition of elemental forms and the reiteration of a dynamism that arises out of contrary elements: fullness-emptiness, black-white, and so on.

Luiz Sacilotto (1924?2003) was one of the pioneers of concrete art in Brazil. He began his art career shortly after the second post-war era with Expressionist paintings, and under the influence of Waldemar Cordeiro, he opted to follow the Concrete art trend, and became part of the “grupo ruptura” that issued its initial manifesto in São Paulo (1952). Faithful to these principles, his work continued along this vein until the 1990s. The retrospective show covered in this text, Sacilotto: expressões e concreções, brought together the work he produced between the 1940s and 1970s. Décio Pignatari (1927?2012) was a key figure in the Concrete movement through his participation in the Grupo Noigandres and its homonymous magazine (1952), which Pignatari led along with the de Campos brothers (Haroldo and Augusto).

[For a complementary reading, see in the ICAA digital archive by Charoux, Cordeiro, de Barros, Féjer, Haar, Sacilotto and Wladyslaw the “ruptura” manifesto (doc. no. 771349) and their manuscript (doc. no. 1232213); by the author of this text “Seja breve: Décio Pignatari escreve resenha-depoimento sobre o artista plastico Luiz Sacilotto” (doc. no. 1233093); by Waldemar Cordeiro “Sacilotto, poeta da economia moderna” (doc. no. 1085382); by Frederico de Morais “Sacilotto: obras selecionadas: de 24 de maio (quarta-feira) a 24 de junho de 1995” (doc. no. 1233108); and by Enock Sacramento “Luiz Sacilotto, nosso artista em Zurich” (doc. no. 1233137)].