PROTAGONIST OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE VANGUARD AND POP AND PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION

A tireless experimenter, Geraldo de Barros developed his art in multiple directions: painting, printmaking, design and photography. He participated as a leading figure in the constructivist vanguard of Grupo Ruptura (between 1952 and 1957; the group continued until 1959) as well as in the pop and performance art of Grupo Rex (1966–1967), always maintaining a very personal poetics. In this exhibition, we have tried to show the underlying coherence and undeniable originality of his production despite the great variety of solutions adopted, approaching his work from three different points of view.  

On the first floor, we explore the relationship between imagination and formal abstraction in his works based on the influence of Paul Klee, whose production Geraldo discovered in 1948, and on the artists of the Engenho de Dentro Psychiatric Hospital, whom he met in 1949, by way of critic Mário Pedrosa and artist Almir Mavignier. This section is centered on photography, spanning from his youthful experiments up to the production he made near the end of his life, with the Sobras [Remains] series, while also including drawings, prints and paintings from his various phases.  

On the first sublevel, under the sign of Max Bill, whom Geraldo met in 1951, we investigate the constants of his constructive principles and methods, taking furniture design as a reference point. The first two sections presented do not follow a rigorous chronological order, suggesting analogies and intercrossings among different phases and techniques.  

On the second sublevel, curated by Michel Favre based on Geraldo de Barro’s rich archive conserved in Geneva, Switzerland, we have an extensive timeline that puts works, documents and other materials into relation, reconstructing and problematizing the various stages of his poetics.

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Lorenzo Mammi‍