The book Cuadernos de pintura (1982), by the visual artist Manuel Quintana Castillo (1928–2016), is a collection of essays on art theory and other aspects of art. In his book, the writer analyzes, criticizes and interprets aesthetic, conceptual, technical, formal and historical aspects of art. The essay includes a discussion on the history of cultures and the development of certain art movements and major figures in modern art history both in the Americas and in Europe. Here, we have a small sample of the intellectual contributions made by this artist, along with the art he created, starting in 1955. As such, it reflects some of the creative interests he was involved in defending at the time. The artist’s comments on constructivism represent a basic theoretical contribution to understanding a little-discussed aspect of this trend: the “transcendent value” perceived by Quintana Castillo of the geometric art language. His criticism focuses on the excessive technical orientation of the proponents of the trend, artists who dismiss the historic spiritual value represented by geometry in human culture. This text was written in 1980, a period that was fairly important in the definition of the aesthetic, material/constructivist path and the language that would mark the artist’s work until the late 1990s. In turn, Quintana Castillo formulated his criticisms of Abstract Expressionism between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, regardless of the fact that until 1963, his own work was considered related to this trend.
[In addition, in the ICAA digital archive, see two other texts from chapter III of the book Cuadernos de pintura: “América y arte” (doc. no. 1156234) and “Expresionismo y abstracción” (doc. no. 1156218)].
