Letra y Línea. Revista de cultura contemporánea. Artes plásticas. Literatura. Teatro. Cine. Música. Crítica. [Letter and Line. Magazine of Contemporary Culture. Visual Arts. Literature. Drama. Cinema. Music. Criticism] was a contemporary culture publication edited by Aldo Pellegrini (1903-1973) whose four issues appeared between October 1953 and July 1954. Its collaborators included Edgar Bayley (1919-1990), Osvaldo Svanascini (1920), Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967), Mario Trejo (1926), Enrique Molina (1910-1997), Juan Carlos Paz (1897-1972), and Norah Lange (1906-72), among many others. The survey’s agenda was based on the following questions: 1) What is the fundamental nature of painting in your opinion?; 2) Where is modern painting headed?; 3) Is there such a thing as Argentinean painting?; 4) Do you believe in the previous generation? Tomás Maldonado (1922), Sarah Grilo (1921-2007), José Manuel Moraña (1917-2005), Fernández Muro (1920), Juan Cerdá Carretero, Ideal Sánchez (1916-1988), Lidy Prati (1921), Víctor Magariños “D” (1924-1993), and Miguel Ocampo (1922) responded to the survey.Tomás Maldonado is an intellectual, painter, and designer who was born in Buenos Aires in 1922. In 1945 he became a founding member of the painters’ movement known as the Asociación de Arte Concreto-Invención [Concrete Art and Invention Association] and, in 1954, he moved to Germany where he became a professor as the Hochschule für Gestaltung [School of Advanced Studies in Form], in Ulm, an institution he later directed.This article was selected because it documents a young artist’s opinion regarding the debates that were then mobilizing the Argentinean artistic field at the moment abstraction was being consolidated.
