Composición Maquinista 1957

José Pedro Costigliolo made this painting, Composición Maquinista, with what looks like oil on canvas. It’s got all these geometric shapes and a fairly limited colour palette of black, white, red, yellow, tan and blue. I can imagine him, methodically planning out this composition, maybe on paper first, before carefully filling in each shape with clean lines. I wonder what Costigliolo was thinking about when he made this. The title, "Machinist Composition" makes me think he was inspired by machinery, but maybe it’s more about the idea of constructing a painting like a machine with each part carefully considered and fitted together. Look at how the thick paint emphasizes the flatness of the picture plane, pushing back against any illusion of depth. The composition is so balanced, so precise, it's almost like he’s building an argument, one shape at a time. Artists are always riffing off of each other, whether they know it or not. This geometric abstraction reminds me of Torres-Garcia, another Uruguayan artist, and the De Stijl movement. Painting is a conversation across time and space, it's about taking ideas, twisting them, and making something new.