Dictionary
Group Cercle et Carré

The Cercle et Carré group was founded by the writer, poet and critic, Michel Seuphora, and the Urguan painter and art theorist Joaquín Torres García in Paris in 1929. The group’s aims, to promote constructivist tendencies in avant-garde art, in opposition to Surrealism, were reflected in its name, which referred to two geometric basic forms, the circle and square. The members of Cercle et Carré included Hans Arp, Le Corbusier, Kurt Schwitters, Luigi Russolo, Fernand Léger, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Amédée Ozenfant, Antoine Pevsner and Georges Vantongerloo, amongst others. Cercle et Carré’s group exhibition in early 1930 at the Galerie 23, rue La Boëtie in Paris, displayed the members’ abstract positions and was their only work shown in public, apart from the three journals which the group published. Although it was dissolved in autumn of the same year, the Cercle et Carré group had a strong influence on the positioning of abstract art. It was succeeded by the Abstraction – Création group, founded in Paris in 1931, which contained many members of Cercle et Carré.