The publishing arm of the Asociación Arte Concreto—Invención [Concrete Art and Invention Association] included two publications: the journal Arte Concreto, published in August 1946 and the Boletín de la Asociación de Arte Concreto Invención nº 2 [the Association’s Bulletin, No. 2], which appeared in December 1946. The members of La Asociación Arte Concreto—Invención were Edgar Bayley, Antonio Caraduje, Simón Contreras, Manuel Espinosa, Alfredo Hlito, Enio Iommi, Obdulio Landi, Raúl Lozza, Tomás Maldonado, Alberto Molenberg, Primaldo Mónaco, Oscar Núñez, Lidy Prati, Jorge Souza and Matilde Werbin. The association’s administrative work was handled by Manuel Espinosa, Raúl Lozza and Tomás Maldonado. Others who joined the editorial staff later were Juan Mele, Gregorio Vardanega and Virgilio Villalba. Raúl Lozza, an Argentine artist (1911-2008), was a member of the editorial team of the journal Contrapunto [Counterpoint]. He was also a founding father of the Asociación Arte Concreto—Invención, and in 1947, he created Perceptismo [Perceptivism], a trend that had its own publication. As time went by, Lozza continued to work both in a relational color theory as well as with the idea of color fields. He died in Buenos Aires. José Bento Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) was a reporter and writer considered to be the founder of children’s literature in Brazil. In 1917, he criticized an exhibition of the work of Anita Malfatti in terms of its “paranoia or mixtificación” [paranoia or mythmaking]. His approach provoked a reaction from some young intellectuals (Oswald de Andrade, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Mário de Andrade, among others). Later, these young thinkers would organize a Semana de Arte Moderno de 1922 [1922 Modern Art Week] in São Paulo. This source was selected because it is testimony to one of the controversies carried on by the Concrete avant-garde. The letter is a response to the nationalist discourse of Monteiro Lobato, who was living in Buenos Aires at the time. Note that the same “Carta Abierta a Monteiro Lobato” [Open Letter to Monteiro Lobato] was also published by the journal Joaquim in São Paulo in 1947.
