In this letter to Waldemar Cordeiro, Max Bense responds to Cordeiro’s proposal to undertake an aesthetic analysis of Cordeiro’s Popcretos works. Bense perceives in them two distinct facets—Pop art and Concrete painting—which evidence two situations resulting from practical and theoretical consumerism, as well as the banal and the ideal. In Bense’s view, the banal and everyday things in the Popcretos are worn and imperfect, and subject to destruction. As such, they are at a distance from the order and integrity characteristic of Concrete layouts. The success of Cordeiro’s work lies in the pertinence of the dialectic he formulates in which, by means of mere layout, everyday and banal moments are ultimately abolished by a Platonic instance. For the writer of the letter, all of this entails the formation of new categories of things understood as signs regardless of the sociological aggression they may contain.

This text in letter format written in Stuttgart, Germany on November 15, 1964 would serve as the introduction to a solo exhibition of work by Waldemar Cordeiro (1925–1973) held at the Galeria Atrium in São Paulo in December of that year. The catalogue also contained a text by Cordeira where he expresses his interest in a new figuration, albeit within the parameters of what he calls “semantic Concrete art” (see ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1110835). Regarding his version of new figuration, see the essay “VII Bienal: ‘nova figuração’ denuncia a alienação do indivíduo” (doc no. 1110842). This letter, translated from German to Portuguese by Concrete poet Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003), attests to the happy encounter that took place between Cordeiro, Max Bense (1910–1990), and the de Campos brothers in Rio de Janeiro, specifically at the apartment of José Lino Grünewald (1931–2000), another member of the Noigandres Concrete poetry group. The concept of “Popcretos,” a term coined by Augusto de Campos (b. 1931), was one of the topics that came up at that encounter.

The combative painter, designer, landscape artist, and art critic Waldemar Cordeiro came to Brazil from his native Rome after World War II. Starting in the late forties, he wrote for the Brazilian press. The text “O objeto” (doc. no. 1086891) is paradigmatic of the ideas he defended during that time of intense clashes in the sphere of art in Brazil. On the basis of the self-referential nature of the idea of “the concrete”—conception of art as a real and absolutely autonomous object—Cordeiro triggered a wide range of discussions and debates with artists and critics of the time, among them poet, journalist, and art critic [José Ribamar] Ferreira Gullar (b. 1930) who defended the subjective facet of art. Ferreira Gullar’s “Teoria do não-objeto” (doc. no. 1091374) was pertinent to what would later become the Rio de Janeiro-based Neo-Concrete movement.

German philosopher Max Bense was a professor of aesthetics and semiotics at the Hochschule für Gstaltung [School of Design] in Ulm. His academic interests brought him into close contact with Brazilian Concrete artists and poets, whose work he disseminated in Germany; Bense visited Brazil on four occasions between 1961 and 1964.