Luis Tomasello

Biographical Data

Argentinean painter born in La Plata in 1915 and died in Paris in 2013. Luis Tomasello was one of the main Argentinean artists to move to Paris in 1957 in order to carry on with his work, structured around geometric abstraction. Influenced by Piet Mondrian, he quickly leaned toward using the repetition of simple geometric shapes inside orthogonal grids. The use of relief allowed him to transform the elements he isolated into modules and achieve specific light effects. As a member of the optical kinetic art movement, Luis Tomasello participated in all the international exhibitions that set this trend during the sixties. He exhibited his works on a regular basis in France and around the world.

Brief Chronology

Luis Tomasello’s art is based on relief, something he used since the late fifties. And not because of the relief itself, but because of the shape it presented in space and the way it would allow him to play with light. Luis Tomasello used identical modules –hyphens, cubes, rhombuses, square or rhomboid planes– arranged inside regular orthogonal grids with a particular orientation. These reliefs, generally white, create their own shadows depending on the light they receive and they project it onto the changing surface. In addition, Luis Tomasello’s idea consisted of using the underside of these elements –the back of a plane, the hidden sides of a cube– to paint them, generally with fluorescent colors, and making them indirectly reflect the color onto the surface. His works are entitled Chromoplastics.

An inheritor of neoplasticism and Jean Gorin’s relief art, his work often shared the interests of the O Group and the Nouvelle tendance artists. Luis Tomasello also transfered the results of his research to architecture, through incorporations in numerous public buildings in Europe and South America.

El 2013, la Fundació Stämpfli exhibited Luis Tomasello’s work Chromoplastic atmosphere, num. 992 (2011) during the CINETIK! show (27 April to 27 October 2013). This exhibit brought together some of the most important lumino kinetic artists of Spanish and Latin American origin.

S.L.

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Chromoplastic atmosphere, num. 992, 2011 Relief, acrylic on wood 62,5 x 62,5 x 10 cm