Judith Lauand’s Free Hand

In 1954 Brazilian artist Judith Lauand wove a black-and-green tapestry in a geometric pattern.

She was following the logic of concretism—a movement that sought to create geometric abstract artworks based on rational ideas, like mathematical formulas and algorithms. But she was also using skills “historically associated with women’s traditional spheres of craftsmanship, embroidery, and the decorative arts,” says art historian Aliza Edelman. This combination showed innovation, as well as a hint of rebellion.

Lauand, who recently died at 100 years old, was the only female member of Ruptura, a group of artists associated with concretism. She grew up in Araraquara, where she studied at the School of Fine Arts. In 1952 she moved to São Paulo and got in touch with Ruptura, who invited her to join three years later. The group’s manifesto spoke against old art values, which they associated with figurative painting as well as with another type of abstractionism, which they called “hedonistic non-figuration, a product of gratuitous taste, which seeks mere excitement of ‘pleasure or displeasure.’” Ruptura believed that art, by not attempting to represent the outside world (meaning no more depictions of landscapes or gestural emotions), could gain autonomy from it.

Yet Lauand didn’t always follow these rules; she experimented around and outside of the precepts of Ruptura’s concrete art. In most of her abstract work she would structure a certain painting through an algorithmic sequence, which was part of Ruptura’s way of working. However, she wouldn’t follow the sequence all the way through. “Lauand showed interest in creating unpredictable situations of asymmetric balance and dynamism,” says art historian Heloisa Espada. “She often broke the expectations created by the algorithm that structured the artwork.”

Also, there are surprising depictions of women in her work even after she joined Ruptura. In 1969 Lauand made a series of images based on movie scenes that show men and women embracing. In each image the woman looks away from her partner, disengaged. “The women in these images are feminists. They are clearly negotiating notions of suffering and love,” Edelman says.

Lauand never let her experimental appetite fade. “That combination between the artisanal nature and the concrete exactitude was a constant struggle in her work,” says Edelman. She sees it especially in Lauand’s sketchbooks, which reveal the contradiction between how the artist presented herself publicly and how she formed her own ideas privately. “There’s a certain front that she put on, perhaps you can even call it a masquerade, when she was presenting herself to this very masculine group and world,” Edelman says. “But when you look at Lauand’s sketchbooks, you see the experimentation, the adaptability, the intellectual force that she brings to her works.”

It was this insurgent spirit that led her to expand the notion of concretism over her long career. Edelman confesses she almost cried when she interviewed Lauand in the 2010s and heard her say, “I like having a free hand, always free.” Even within an art movement shaped by mathematics, Lauand wasn’t bound by the rules.