QUOTES FROM THIRD PARTIES AND THE ARTIST HIMSELF BRING TOGETHER THE THREE FLOORS OF THE EXHIBITION AREA

“Inner freedom is within everyone's reach; art is the key to this liberation. [Geraldo] understood that to achieve this spiritual stage it was necessary, to be freed from prejudices, to achieve the same free attitude towards all things of the Engenho de Dentro anonymous artists.”
(Mário Pedrosa in manuscript, unfinished and unpublished, circa 1950.)

“What did photography add to your training as an artist? It gave me the awareness of the relationship between the objective and the subjective. [...] His art started being constructed by a kind of egalitarian exchange between the aspect that things, even the smallest, even insignificant details, present themselves, as well as the suggestions that come from within himself. His creative work is a system of exchange, back and forth between objective reality and the activation of the subjective imagination.”
(Mário Pedrosa in manuscript, unfinished and unpublished, circa 1950.)

“It is about obtaining a visible movement of ebb and flow, opposing light and dark, and this implies in the energetic use of two poles. The strength of the conflict requires, in fact, that the opposite black and white poles assert their presence: they confer all their tension to the contrasting play of forces on the scale of tonal nuances.”
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“An immediately evident characteristic of the artist is the apparent movement and, intrinsically, the polyvalence of forms in their effects on our perception. [...] When a starting point such as the one offered by these works, which allows several readings, is proposed, it becomes impossible to see more than one meaning simultaneously, our perception always chooses one among others. [...] There is obviously a need for decision, our perception does not allow us to give up making decisions. It decides for itself even when there is little information available, as in the case of these works. Postponing that could be dangerous!
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Deciding, as our perception does, is a matter of survival.”
(Eugen Gomringer in catalog for Geraldo de Barros's exhibition at Galerie Tschudi, in Glarona [Switzerland, 1987, p. 8].

“I was very impressed by a certain type of plastic inquiry that [Geraldo] was deepening, the idea of the perceptual ambivalence between two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. One of these modules, which he explored in various ways, was the series of paintings in which he took a square and placed it with only the outer lines evident. When looking at the painting, you sometimes saw the square, which came in the foreground, sometimes you could see the cube and saw the perspective, the projection of that.”
‍(Augusto de Campos in an interview with Michel Favre, 1999.)

“Not only [Waldemar] Cordeiro but also Maurício [Nogueira Lima], [Luis] Sacilotto and Geraldo were also painters linked to the utopia of taking art to the common object, to design, to the collective. And this utopia presented, behind it, an even greater utopia, which was the idea that if you cultivated or led people to cultivate a rational, organized, clear art, it would have to do with a society that was also clearer and better distributed.”
‍(Augusto de Campos in an interview with Michel Favre, 1999.)

“I intend to do something very modest, I want to work, by myself, on a small formal motif, which the pencil can master without any technique. A mere chance is enough, this little thing is easily and concisely resolved. It’s done! It's tiny, but authentic work. And one day, through the repetition of such small but original achievements, the time will come for a work on which I can truly build.”
‍(Paul Klee in Diaries [text included by Geraldo de Barros in the folder of his print exhibition at MAM, TIRA”/SP” 1952].)

“We gathered so that there was no distinction between moderns and academics. We are always suspicious of those who say: 'I am modern!' We want them to say: 'I am a painter!' – and prove that statement by painting.”
‍(Quote by Geraldo de Barros in the article Half an hour at the Jacaré studio, by Ibiapaba Martins, published in 1948 in Correio Paulistano)

“For me, photography is an engraving process. I also believe that it is in the 'error', in the exploration and in the domain of 'chance' that the creation in photography resides.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros; thought elaborated around 1949 and later published in the catalog of the Hecho en Latino America exhibition, held in Mexico, in 1978.)

“Every artist must be completely free, having commitments only to himself.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros in the 43rd edition of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante bulletin, 1949.)

“It can be said that abstract art performs the function of religious yearning, the search for the sacred, in the nihilistic atmosphere of the world today.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros in an interview with Louis Wiznitzer for the newspaper A Manhã, 1952.)

“If we manage to focus on some details that no one knows what they are, we are facing an abstract photograph. When we organize shapes in space, we are in the field of concrete photography.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros in an interview with Walter Zanini for the newspaper O Tempo, 1953.)

“The role of an industrial designer is universal and collectivist. He no longer thinks in terms of Dona Fulana's or Mme X’s house.”
‍(Interview with Geraldo de Barros and Alexandre Wollner published in the newspaper A Gazeta de S.Paulo, 1958.)

“We will highlight the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, the accelerated step, the somersault, the punch in the ear, the punch.”
‍(Quote by Geraldo de Barros in Nelson Leirner × Geraldo de Barros, in the City News newspaper of São Paulo, 1965.)

“It is important to recreate the billboard presenting a new and personal reality, because accepting the poster as it is represents accepting an imposition.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros in a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, on May 15, 1977.)

“The author enables the reproduction of shape-objects, according to the prototypes presented, obeying the standards specified in the projects.”
‍(On the Resumption of Some Form-Objects of Concrete Art, leaflet distributed free of charge at the 15th São Paulo International Biennial, 1979.)

“I abolished the use of canvas, brush and paint and opted for a material without 'tradition' and fame in the art system: Formica boards on plywood, widely used in the industry and linked to everyday life in objects that we use, especially furniture.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros in the catalog of the Brazilian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1986.)

“If 'touching-up' is allowed, changes to the negative are also allowed. A negative found all scratched and dusty, if it provides a good photographic result, the photograph belongs to the person making it, not to the person who exposed the negative.”
‍(Geraldo de Barros; thought elaborated around 1949 and later published in the catalog of the Hecho en Latino America exhibition, held in Mexico, in 1978.)

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