The water that dances, the light that sings: Gyula kosice and the hydrospatial dream

Kosice was no ordinary sculptor. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1924 as Ferdinand Fallik, he arrived in Buenos Aires at the age of four with his family, fleeing antisemitic persecution. The young man grew up in the lively alleys of San Telmo, where the scents of tango and mate mingled with the shouts of scrap metal dealers. It was in this setting of rusted metal and broken glass that he would later find the materials for his first sculptures. But what truly set him apart was his vision: for him, art was not meant to be contemplated, but lived. "A painting is a dead object," he would say with a mischievous smile. "A sculpture must breathe, move, transform."

His masterpiece, La Ciudad Hidroespacial—a utopian city floating in the air, powered by water and light—remains one of the most visionary projects of the 20th century. Yet Kosice was neither an architect nor an engineer. Just a stubborn dreamer who firmly believed that art could change the world. And if, today, his works seem strangely familiar—somewhere between Olafur Eliasson’s immersive installations and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive environments—it is because Kosice, long before the digital age, sketched the outlines of an art where the viewer becomes the participant.

01The manifesto that shook Buenos Aires

It was 1946, in a cramped apartment in the Flores neighborhood. Around a Formica table cluttered with glasses of red wine and sketches, three young men—Gyula Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin, and Rhod Rothfuss—were about to drop an artistic bombshell. They were twenty years old, full of radical ideas, and had a visceral aversion to "serious" art. That evening, they drafted the Madí manifesto, a text that would rattle Argentina’s cultural scene.

The name Madí remains a mystery. Some see it as a contraction of Materialismo Dialéctico (Dialectical Materialism), others as a reference to MA (movement) and DI (dialectic). Kosice would later admit he had simply found the word "amusing." What is certain is that the manifesto rejected everything: surrealism, social realism, and even concrete art, which was all the rage in Buenos Aires at the time. "Art is not representation, but invention," they proclaimed. "The work must be mobile, transformable, interactive."

At the time, Argentina was ruled by Juan Perón, whose regime encouraged nationalist, figurative art. The Madí group, however, wanted to break the rules. Their first exhibitions resembled happenings before the term even existed. At the Primera Exposición Madí in 1946, visitors discovered paintings with cut-out geometric shapes, articulated metal sculptures, and, above all, Röyi, Kosice’s first hydraulic work: an assemblage of glass tubes filled with colored water, operated by a hand pump. The public, accustomed to static canvases, was disconcerted. Some laughed, others were outraged. One critic wrote, "This is plumbing, not art." Kosice, delighted, replied, "Plumbing is an art when it makes water flow with poetry."

02Water as living matter

Kosice had one obsession: to turn water into sculptural material. Not as a decorative element, like the fountains of the Renaissance, but as a living organism, capable of movement and metamorphosis. His studio, a former warehouse in La Boca, looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Basins of colored water sat alongside salvaged pumps, hand-blown glass tubes, and neon lights stolen from advertising signs.

His first experiments were rudimentary. For Röyi (1946), he had salvaged soda bottles, melted them down, and stretched them into spirals with the help of a local glassblower. The water, dyed with methylene blue, circulated thanks to a modified bicycle pump. The result was both fragile and hypnotic. "Water is the only material without a fixed form," he explained. "It takes the shape of any container, just as art must adapt to every gaze."

But it was with Hidrocinetismo (1948) that Kosice took a leap forward. This monumental sculpture—nearly five feet tall—was composed of several glass and metal modules connected by a system of electric pumps. The water circulated in a closed loop, creating cascades, whirlpools, and droplets that seemed to dance. The public could adjust valves to change the flow, turning the work into a unique sensory experience. When it was presented at the Galería Bonino, the installation caused a scandal: a leak flooded the floor, and instead of apologizing, Kosice declared it "the best performance of the evening."

03The city that floated in the clouds

If Hidrocinetismo left its mark, it was La Ciudad Hidroespacial that would become Kosice’s magnum opus. The idea took root in his mind as early as 1946, while he was watching clouds from the rooftop of his studio. What if cities, instead of sprawling on the ground, floated in the air? What if they were powered by water and light, those two eternal elements?

For over twenty years, Kosice worked on this utopian project, building models in Plexiglas and aluminum, drawing detailed plans, and writing manifestos. La Ciudad Hidroespacial was to be a nomadic city, composed of habitable modules suspended in the sky, connected by transparent walkways. Water would play a central role: it would serve as an energy source, a thermal regulation system, and an aesthetic element, with cascades and pools integrated into the structures.

The project was, of course, impossible with the technology of the time. Yet Kosice never gave up. In the 1960s, he exhibited his models at the Centre Pompidou and Documenta in Kassel, where they fascinated visitors. Critics saw them as a metaphor for freedom, a poetic response to the Cold War and the space race. "It’s a city for dreamers," Kosice said. "A city where art and life are one."

04The scandal of the stolen neon

Kosice had a particular relationship with light. As early as the 1940s, he experimented with neon tubes, which he salvaged from butcher shops and movie theater signs in Buenos Aires. For him, neon was not just a material, but a living, almost organic substance. "Neon is the light of the future," he claimed. "It’s electric, but it breathes. It flickers like a heartbeat."

His first neon works, like Neon No. 1 (1946), were abstract assemblages of curved tubes emitting a bluish or pink glow. But it was with his hydraulic sculptures that he took the experiment further. By combining water and neon, he created unprecedented visual effects: light refracted in droplets, creating iridescent halos, while the colored tubes seemed to float in the water like luminous algae.

This fascination with neon got him into some trouble. In 1965, while exhibiting in Paris, several of his tubes mysteriously disappeared. The police found them a few days later… in a nightclub in the Latin Quarter, where they were lighting up the dance floor. Far from being offended, Kosice declared it "the most beautiful consecration possible." After all, hadn’t he always said that art should escape museums?

05The legacy of a stubborn dreamer

Gyula Kosice passed away in 2016 at the age of 92, leaving behind more than 500 works and a legacy as rich as it is overlooked. Today, his hydraulic sculptures are displayed in some of the world’s greatest museums—the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, and the MALBA in Buenos Aires—but his name often remains absent from official histories of modern art. Yet his influence is everywhere.

Contemporary artists who work with water, light, and interactivity owe him a great deal. Olafur Eliasson, with his monumental waterfalls, carries on the idea of an art that engages all the senses. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, with his interactive installations, pushes the public’s participation further than Kosice ever did. Even architects, like Bjarke Ingels, seem to draw inspiration from La Ciudad Hidroespacial in their floating city projects.

But beyond the technical influence, it is Kosice’s philosophy that remains most relevant. In a world where art is often reduced to a speculative commodity, where museums resemble cultural supermarkets, his work reminds us of a simple truth: art is not made to be owned, but to be lived. To breathe, to move, to transform. Like water.

Perhaps that is why, in front of one of Kosice’s sculptures, we always have that strange feeling of seeing something both familiar and strange. As if, without knowing it, we had always been waiting for art to finally start dancing.