Geraldo de Barros

(Chavantes, 1923 - São Paulo, 1988)

Geraldo de Barros was one of the most multifaceted artists in São Paulo, working as a painter, print maker, graphic designer, furniture designer, draftsman, and photographer. De Barros pushed experimental photography to new heights, as he made interventions to the photographic negative: cutting, punching, solarising, and superimposing images with drawing, painting, and other techniques. Throughout the 1940s, de Barros was actively engaged with his peers, when in 1948, the influential critic Mário Pedrosa introduced him to the Gestalt theory. A founding member of Grupo 15, de Barros also joined the Bandeirantes Photo Cine Club (FCCB) – the main group of modern Brazilian photographers – and in 1949 created the Centre for Photography at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). In 1951 de Barros moved to Paris where he studied lithography for a short period at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and then travelled to Germany where he studied graphic design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm. During his time in Germany, de Barros met Max Bill, one of the main Concrete Art theorists of the era, whose concepts would inform his later work. Upon returning to São Paulo, de Barros continued to engage in the Concrete Movement by joining Grupo Ruptura with Waldemar Cordeiro in 1952, while also pursuing his interests in design, founding the first Graphic Design studio, Forminform, in 1957, and later joining Grupo Rex in 1966, an artistic collaborative more closely associated with the New Figuration and New Realism movements in the United States and Europe.