Waldemar Cordeiro

Waldemar Cordeiro (April 12, 1924 – June 30, 1973) was an Italian-born Brazilian art critic and artist. He worked as a computer artist in the early days of computer art and was a pioneer of the concrete art movement in Latin America.

Early life and education Cordeiro was born in Rome, Italy to a Brazilian father and an Italian mother. He had dual citizenship.

Cordeiro studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. At Accademia di Belle Arti, Cordeiro painted in the figurative and expressive art styles. During this time, he began to study the work of Antonio Gramsci, who was deeply influential to his career.

Through this work at Folha da Manhã, Cordeiro was the self-appointed leader of the Arte Concrete community, made up of artists who came from diverse immigrant backgrounds, such as Anatol Wladyslaw, Geraldo de Barros, Lothar Charoux, Luiz Sacilotto, Kazmer Fejer and Leopoldo Haar. Cordeiro gathered the artists together as extension of a 1948 exhibition at the Prestes Maia Gallery, where the newly emerging artists had their work first shown. Through this work, Cordeiro became known as a pioneer of the concrete art movement in Latin America, specifically Brazil. As Grupo Ruptura's main theoretician, he supported the group's rationalist position, openly opposed to the principles put forward by the Rio group led by the art critic Ferreira Gullar.

Derivatives of an image At the end of the 60's, Cordeiro introduced the computer to his creation system, with "derivatives of an image (1969)", made with Giorgio Moscati, in the IBM 360 of the University of São Paulo, inaugurating with this work the "computer art "in Brazil. His goal was to translate a photographic image into a numerical model, this by means of a computer language. In 1971, Cordeiro uses a photograph of a Vietnamese girl, burned by a napalm bomb, transforming it into thousands of points by the digital process of the computer.

Through Arteônica, Cordeiro highlighted some problems, such as the way in which works are consumed, mechanical or electronic reproductions, where information tends to be lost and therefore meaningless. "The change of communication is the change of information" says the artist.

Museums and collections Fundación Cisneros, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Caracas, Venezuela / New York, New York) Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil) Museu de Arte de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, Texas) Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil) The Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami, Florida)

Memberships Computer Art Society (London, England) – Cordeiro was first Brazilian to hold membership

Awards and honors 1959: Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea 1965: Bienal de São Paulo, Prêmio Itamaraty 1967: Bienal de São Paulo, Prêmio Itamaraty

Selected works Idéia visível (Visible Idea) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1956) – Industrial latex paint on plywood laminate panel Derivadas de Uma Imagem (Derivatives of an Image) by Waldemar Cordeiro and Giorgio Moscati. (1969) – First visual computer artwork made in Brazil Retrato de Fabiana (Portrait of Fabiana) by Waldemar Cordeiro and Ernesto Vita, Jr. (1970) – sequential work composed of four images A Mulher que não ê B.B. (The Woman Who Is Not B.B.) by Waldemar Cordeiro, José Luiz Aguirre and Estevam Roberto Serafim (1971) Gente, Grau 1 (People, Degree 1) by Waldemar Cordeiro, Raul Fernando Dada and J. Soares Sobrinho. (1972) Gente, Grau 6 (People, Degree 6) by Waldemar Cordeiro, Raul Fernando Dada and J. Soares Sobrinho. (1972) (1972) – computer output on paper Pirambu by Waldemar Cordeiro, N. Machado and Raul Fernando Dada (1973) – digital printout (1971, printed 1973) – lithograph

Works and publications

Cordeiro, Waldemar. Arteônica. O uso criativo de meios electrônicos nas artes. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 1972. Cordeiro, Waldemar. "Arte analógica e/ou digital," in Arte: Novos Meios/Multimeios. Brasil '70/'80 (São Paulo: Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, 1985) pp. 191–192. Cordeiro, Waldemar. Salão de sombras. Recife: Prefeitura da Cidade do Recife, Secretaria de Educação e Cultura, Conselho Municipal de Cultura, Fundação de Cultura Cidade do Recife, 1992 (Poems)