Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation examines the post-1968 work of the Argentine artist and architect Clorindo Testa (1923-2013), arguing that 1968 represents a major turning point in his career, when he rethought his artistic practice in response to the dramatically altered institutional, political, and economic circumstances of Argentina in the late 1960s. Over the years between 1968 and 1974 Testa worked out the logic of this transformation and established the conceptual, stylistic, and thematic basis for the final four decades of his career. His studio production from this period is bracketed by the creation of two major, architecturally-themed works: the 1968 site-specific installation Prop for a Museum (Apuntalamiento para un museo) at National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and the 1974 mural-sized Dwelling, Transportation, Work, and Recreation (Habitar, circular, trabajar y recrearse), conceived for the Galería Carmen Waugh, in the same city. This dissertation proposes that, on an international level, Prop for a Museum stands out as one of the pioneering works of the emergent conceptualist practice of institutional critique, and that together with Dwelling, Transportation, Work, and Recreation it represents a kind of manifesto for the new, post-1968 direction in the artist’s work.

This dissertation analyzes the production of the Concrete and Madí artists, who were active in Argentina in the 1940s and 50s. Concrete and Madí artists proposed, for the first time in this country, the need for an art that was completely different from representational and expressionist art, and they believed that their "inventions," both visual and linguistic, could foster social change. Many aspects of the journal Arturo, published in 1944, and of Concrete and Madí art continue to be a puzzle, such as their relation with past and contemporary artistic and intellectual productions, their relation with the volatile Argentine political climate of the 1940s and 50s, and their ultimate artistic significance. This study interprets the propositions of these artists as responsive to phenomena they experienced in an immediate manner in the time and place in which they lived. The dissertation thus contextualizes Concrete and Madí art in five scenarios: publications by Spanish emigres and Argentine writers which explored the concepts of "automatism" and "invention;" discourses about "Nazism" and "democracy," and about "civilization" and "barbarism" that emerged through literary periodicals of the mid-1940s; political propaganda displayed under the rule of Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955); the development of modern-looking and functional architecture fostered by Peronist architectural policies; and the artists' dialogues with the ideas of musicians then living in Argentina and Brazil. Ultimately, the dissertation constructs dialogues between specific instances of Argentine cultural and political history of the 1940s and 50s, and a selection of Concrete and Madí works and writings.