Geraldo DE BARROS

BIOGRAPHY

Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)

Born in São Paulo in 1923, Geraldo de Barros enrolled to study painting at the Associação Paulista de Belas Artes in 1946. Two year later he was one of the founding member of the Expressionist painting studio Grupo 15. Alongside this work, he also began experimenting with photography and, in 1949, joined the Bandeirante Photo Club. His photographic experiments included multiple exposures, the use of hand-made filters, juxtaposition of shadows and light, scratching and drawing and painting on negatives. It was also in 1949 that de Barros, in collaboration with photographer Thomaz Farkas, inititiated a photographic laboratory at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. In 1950, the same museum exhibited de Barros' work under the title "Fotoformas". Having obtained a scholarship from the French government, de Barros traveled to Europe in 1951, and studied painting and lithography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Upon his return to São Paulo the following year, he co-founded the Grupo Ruptura along with painters including Waldemar Cordeiro and Luiz Sacilotto. In 1954, de Barros established Unilabor, a cooperative initiated to design and produce furniture. During the 1960s, his focus shifted to Pop Art. A selection of de Barros' early photographic work was presented at the 1979 Venice Biennale. In 1996, de Barros resumed his photographic work by working on a series of photomontages entitled "Sobras".

The work of Geraldo de Barros is held in a large number of collections across the world which include the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany; the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Musée de l'Élysée, Switzerland. in 2013, The Photographers' Gallery held the first exhibition of the photographer in the UK.