Waldemar Cordeiro
Year of birth, place
Year of death, place
Role at the ZKM
- Artist of the Collection
Biography
Waldemar Cordeiro, whose artistic oeuvre is indissolubly tied to his theoretical production, emerged as a central figure in the development of Brazilian Concretism, one of the defining movements of Brazilian twentieth-century art. His work reflected social, cultural, and technological changes of his time, as seen in his pioneering Computer Art research in Latin America in the late 1960s. Cordeiro’s oeuvre encompasses a wide spectrum of themes and languages, spanning from concretist creations and architectural interventions to experimentation with new technologies, often carrying socio-critical and political undertones.
Waldemar Cordeiro was born in Rome, in 1925, as the son of an Italian mother and a Brazilian father. After relocating to Brazil, in 1949, Cordeiro participated in the inaugural exhibition »Do figurativismo ao abstracionismo« of the São Paulo Modern Art Museum (MAM/SP). Despite maintaining a critical attitude toward the São Paulo Biennial, he participated in its first edition in 1951, as well as various subsequent editions. Together with other abstract painters, he formed the São Paulo-based Grupo Ruptura, the organizers of Brazil’s first important Concrete Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo in 1952 and launched the »Rupture Manifest«. After studying landscape design, Cordeiro concerned himself with new electronic technologies and their influence on social change. Beginning in 1968, he experimented with an IBM 360/44 computer and, in collaboration with the physicist Giorgio Moscati, produced Latin America’s first computer-generated artworks. From 1969 until his early death in 1973, he participated in numerous international exhibitions related to Computer Art, such as »Tendencies 4. Computers and Visual Research,« Zagreb, Croatia (then Yugoslavia), in 1969. In São Paulo in 1970, Cordeiro organized the first Computer Art exhibition in Latin America titled »Computer Plotter Art.« This was followed in 1971 by »Arteônica,« an international exhibition of Computer Art shown at Museu de Arte Brasileira de la Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado in São Paulo. Both exhibitions contributed significantly to the spread of Computer Art, which Cordeiro considered a logical evolution of Concrete Art.