Geraldo de Barros was born in Chavantes (state of São Paulo), in 1923. In 1930, as a result of the economic crisis, his family settled in São Paulo, and, from an early age, Geraldo had to work to pay for his studies. In 1945, his interest in painting led him to his first masters, Clóvis Graciano and Colette Pujol. He learned the rudiments of drawing and painting according to naturalism tradition and, in the same year, he joined the São Paulo Association of Fine Arts (APBA) and the artists union. In 1946, attending classes with Yoshiya Takaoka, he gets closer to spontaneous drawing and intuitive, expressionist painting. In 1947, lastly, Geraldo discovers photography, a field he explores with the same spirit of freedom and provocation.

This year, together with Athayde de Barros, Geraldo holds his first solo exhibition. Together with Athayde, Yoshiya Takaoka, Antônio Carelli, Flávio Shiró and other artists of Japanese origin, he founded Grupo 15.  

The first phase of Geraldo de Barros's photographic production runs from 1948 to the mid-fifties, achieving his peak in the exhibition of the Photoforms, at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), in 1951. Marked by intense experimentation, this period of his production is rich in innovative solutions, such as multiple exposure. Through this technique, photographers overlap images directly on the frame, by moving the camera and by grading diaphragm aperture and exposure time. The result, changing the framing or intervening in the negatives before the  enlargement could only be done after revealing the photo.

By joining Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), Geraldo finds ways to improve his technique, but he also faces a conservative setting. At the same time, he took engraving classes with Poty Lazzarotto at the Escola Livre de Artes Plásticas, dedicating himself mainly to monotype and linocut methods.

In painting, while getting closer to concrete art, as of 1949 onwards, he still shows the influence of Paul Klee's work and an intense dialogue with photographic production. 

In Rio de Janeiro, through visual artist Almir Mavignier, Geraldo meets the art critic Mário Pedrosa. He introduces him to the theory of form, which proposes a notion that, in the words of the critic, "what is being painted corresponds to what is being seen" (free quote mentioned by Geraldo de Barros in The resumption of some objects - concrete art form, published in 1979 at the 15th Biennial of São Paulo).  

Geraldo follows two directions in his experiences in photography: the overlapping and arrangements of shapes and lights in the capturing process; and drawing directly on negatives. These works are presented in the exhibition Photoforms, inaugurated in January 1951 at the São Paulo Museum of Art (Masp).

In Paris, thanks to a scholarship, Geraldo attends classes in lithography at the National School of Fine Arts and in engraving at the studio of Englishman Stanley William Hayter. He finds different artists based in the capital, such as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson and François Morellet. Traveling across Europe, he visits Max Bill in Zurich, Switzerland, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, Italy, and Otl Aicher in Ulm, Germany – where he also attends a graphic arts studio. In the same year, he participates at a distance in the 1st São Paulo Biennial, at which he receives an award.

Back in the capital of São Paulo, Geraldo exhibits his prints at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM). In the same year, with Lothar Charoux, Waldemar Cordeiro, Kazmer Féjer, Leopoldo Haar, Luiz Sacilotto and Anatol Wladyslaw, he established the Ruptura Group, with which he presented, also at the MAM, paintings in which he was aiming to abolish the notion of a single object.

Radicalizing practices such as clipping negatives, Geraldo continues his research in the field of photography, erasing any naturalist references. These works are presented, along with concrete paintings, in the 2nd São Paulo Biennial.

Together with Dominican friar João Baptista Pereira dos Santos, Geraldo joins the Unilabor Work Community, designing furniture that is built according to a collectivist work model, in which decisions and benefits are shared horizontally. The furniture is designed based on rational modularity, which facilitates its manufacture and adapts to the smaller-sized new homes. At the same time, with Alexandre Wollner, he also created posters and visual communication projects for different cultural manifestations.

With Alexandre Wollner, Ruben Martins and Karl Heinz Bergmiller, Geraldo established the industrial design and communication office Forminform, creating logos for manufacturers.

Geraldo de Barros leaves Unilabor. He founded Hobjeto with cabinetmaker Antônio Bioni, with whom he continues his design project with greater dedication to industrialization. Going back to his brushes, he creates a series of figurative paintings with sociopolitical criticism content, prevalent after the military rose to power. In 1965, with Nelson Leirner, he exhibited these works at Galeria Atrium, in São Paulo, and later in Buenos Aires.

In the entrance hall of the Hobjeto store, Geraldo established, with Nelson Leirner and Wesley Duke Lee, the Rex Gallery & Sounds, where the group proposes exhibitions and showings inspired by the Dada and pop art movements.

The Hobjeto factory expanded, established itself and became a reference from 1970 onwards, thanks to its creative design and the use of innovative materials. In 1974, Geraldo creates paintings in large formats, made from panels and posters, which he appropriates and repaints with the help of industrial paints. The collection of those works are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM) in 1977.

In 1976, he resumed photography and made new copies of the Photoforms. He was invited to 15th Biennial of São Paulo, in 1979, when he revisited his concrete production from the 1952-1954 period, once again challenging the status of work of art as a single object.

Geraldo de Barros expands his shape-object project, developing it to the fullest with the realization of assemblies in laminated plastic on wood, which he sends to the cabinetmaker Elias Asfour to be executed as furniture in the Hobjeto studio. At the end of the year, Geraldo has his first stroke, which weakens him and forces him to gradually distance himself from Hobjeto.  

Afraid of having lost his artistic skills, Geraldo wants to test himself. In the intimacy of his own home, without a specific project, he looks for one of the newly rediscovered negatives of Photoforms, which he paints with India ink in a rough way.

Using tracing paper masks that serve to delimit the shapes without marking the lines, the artist asks to cut, paint and paste geometric shapes on graph paper, creating projects that serve as guides for the laminated plastic paintings.

He participated in the Venice Biennale and created, in 1989, the complete series of Dice Games, a two-dimensional separation of the faces of a cube according to the principles of Gestalt (Theory of Form). In 1996, he revisited his concrete projects from the 50s one last time, asking his assistant José Soares to make them in laminated plastic in an identical way at Hobjeto.

At 73 years of age, certainly encouraged by the international visibility of his photographic work from the 50s, a new series of works begins, the Leftovers. With an assistant, photographer Ana Moraes, Geraldo goes back to his family and travel negatives and organizes, cuts and arranges them on glass plates, in unpublished collages that he intends to make enlargements.

At the age of 75, in April 1998, Geraldo died of a pulmonary embolism in São Paulo. In 1999, the Leftovers are presented, in a posthumous tribute, at the Ludwig Museum, in Cologne (Germany), at the Musée de l'Elysée, in Lausanne (Switzerland), and at Sesc Pompéia, in São Paulo.