Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square)

Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) was an art group formed in Paris in 1929 that championed new directions in abstract art, in particular promoting its spiritual, almost mystical tendencies. The association was founded by the Belgian poet and critic Michel Seuphor and the Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres-García as a kind of counterweight to the rise of Surrealism: they sought to rally artists devoted to clarity, order, geometric structure, and the constructive principle. The group published a journal of the same name and, in the spring of 1930, mounted a large exhibition in which some forty artists from various countries took part—Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Fernand Léger, and Le Corbusier. This exhibition was one of the first major international manifestations of abstract art in Paris. Owing to disagreements between its founders the association was short-lived and soon dissolved, giving way to the group Abstraction-Création, yet it played an important role in consolidating the international abstract movement.