In this essay, printed in the brochure for the exhibition Efemérides: Judith Lauand, Gabriela Wilder writes that the works of Judith Lauand are an example of the best concrete art produced in São Paulo in the 1950s. “They also show that in the intimacy allowed by drawing, ideological barriers weaken: structures and forms become more loose.” While works such as Dynamization of Orthogonal Elements (1955) and Virtual Space (1960) adhere to the geometric rigor and inner logic of concretism, Wilder notes that Lauand’s drawings “show a great sensitivity for the representation of dynamic spaces and colors,” alluding at times to urban or rural landscapes. Lauand thus combines “the plastic representation of ideas of vibration, movement, visual sensations” with individualized, subjective and emotional qualities.

A pioneer of modernism that is known as the “First Lady of Concretism,” Judith Lauand (1922–2022) studied at the Escola de Belas-Artes de Araraquara. She worked as a gallery monitor at the celebrated II Bienal de São Paulo in 1953, and participated in the III Bienal de São Paulo in 1955. In 1955, she also met the members of the Paulista Concrete Group – Waldemar Cordeiro, Luiz Sacilotto, Kazmer Féjer, Lothar Charoux, Hermelindo Fiaminghi, and Mauricio Nogueira Lima – and frequented the group meetings. That year, she was invited by Cordeiro to join the Grupo Ruptura, its only female artist. In 1963, she co-founded, with Fiaminghi and Sacilotto, the Galeria Novas Tendências in São Paulo. As Wilder notes, Lauand never stopped participating in concrete exhibitions, and her works from this period demonstrate “a complete identification with the theories and artistic practices of the concretists. They are works of autonomous painting, self-referential, without any relation to what can be seen in nature.”

Lauand’s first solo exhibition was in 1954. She participated in the I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta in 1956 and in the international retrospective Konkrete Kunst: 50 Jahre Entwicklung (Concrete Art: 50 Years of Development), organized by Max Bill in Zurich in 1960. She was the subject of a major retrospective, Judith Lauand: Experiências, at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 2011 [see in the ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1316766">1316766)]. The exhibition accompanying this document took place at the MAC-USP from March-April, 1992. As Wilder, the Director of the museum’s Scientific Division, concludes, “Judith Lauand’s work is still awaiting further study.”

[For more on Judith Lauand, see in the ICAA digital archive the following articles: “Judith Lauand” (doc. no. 1316766">1316766) and“Concretistas na Galeria das ‘folhas’ (doc. no. 1232732). For complementary reading on the Grupo Ruptura, see by Ferreira Gullar “I - O Grupo de São Paulo: I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta” (doc. no. 1087166); by Lothar Charoux “Ruptura” (doc. no. 771349), and “Manifesto Ruptura” (doc. no. 1232213); and by Sérgio Milliet “Duas exposições” (doc. no. 1085432)].