Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

* Text originally published in the Best Photograph in 2007 and upgraded to Paraty in Focus 2010.

By Juan Esteves

The Sao Paulo Geraldo de Barros is one of those photographers whose work is revered by critics, curators and serious researchers, but little known to the public. Moreover, as many who were part of a period of more productive in Brazil, called "modern photography", there by far the 40s and 50s.

This recognition, short of deserved, due, among other things, his work being fragmented in exhibitions, books, academic theses, few publications that do not reach the hands of the majority, even interested. A chronic problem in our culture, which was alleviated with the release of a box containing two books, with a significant part of its essential work.

The two volumes "Fotoformas" and "Remains" were organized by the teacher and researcher Rubens Fernandes Junior and launched by Cosac Naify in January 2007. The exhibition "A (s) symmetry," which brought some of these works and portraits of the artist made by other photographers, was on show at Galeria Brito Cimino, São Paulo, between December 2005 and March 2006 and took award for best exposure the year, given by the APCA (São Paulo Association of Art Critics) that the researcher also awarded by the curators.

For Fernandes Junior, which will launch by the same publishing his doctoral thesis "Expanded Photo", and which contained a special chapter on Geraldo de Barros, the volumes give a chance to "democratize" the knowledge about the work of this great artist. In fact, publications bind their different productions showing the various experiments he did with the photographic medium, signifcativa a portion of its production as an artist.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

It is very difficult to separate the artist photographer. And is this amalgam, skillfully executed, which is the best of his original work. Much of the conservation of this result is due also their daughters, Lenora and Fabiana de Barros, who in the fine arts, had sensibility to the organization and maintenance of your valuable collection for years deposited in the Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland . The excellent museum available to interested parties access to their works. A rare thing around here, unfortunately.

Born in 1923 in Xavante, São Paulo, Geraldo de Barros, was with his family to St. Paul three years later. In 1946, decides to study drawing and painting with the painter and muralist Clovis Graciano (1907-1988) frequenting his studio and falls within the São Paulo Association of Fine Arts. In this way, is the Japanese artist Yoshiya Takaoka (1909-1978) who is credited its real interest in the study of painting. In this workshop, see Athaíde de Barros, who divides his first exhibition in 1947, the hall of the Teatro Municipal de São Paulo, and it was through this friend who is close to the picture.

Athaíde de Barros wanted to be a professional and invited the artist to accompany him. The idea was to photograph the neighborhood teams, earning money from it. The two built a small laboratory in the studio of Group XV.
This group was formed in 1948 by two, by the master Takaoka and twelve other young artists such as Antonio Carelli, and stood in the center of Sao Paulo.

His first camera was built by himself, later replaced with a Rolleiflex. At the beginning, start experimenting. Now with overlays, now with details of artwork on the walls of the city. However, unlike his friend, professionalism does not appeal, and undo the partnership, going in 1949 to meet an amateur club, the now historic Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante. There lived with Thomaz Farkas and German Lorca among others.

At first his ideas do not match many of the club, whose line was pictorialism, and stands out for being independent and pursue a line of inquiry peculiar to that time. Risca negative, do multiple exposures, and puts an element that would become quite significant in their long work: the chance. Needless to say what caused it in the debates and their refusals to work in salons promoted by Bandeirante.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

In the midst of these photographic experiments, continues his career as an artist, it would be equally or more important than the photographer. In 1949 at the invitation of Pietro Maria Bardi (1900-1999), director of brand new Art Museum of São Paulo, organized the photo lab of the museum, placing the photo on the Brazilian art circuit. The plastic design of your images are mainly related to its production as an artist, especially as regards the form.

But since just before the artist begins to reflect on the political and conceptual art. Two factors were key: the approach to the critic Mario Pedrosa Pernambuco (1900-1981) and the psychiatrist Alagoas Nise da Silveira (1906-1999). With the first makes contact with the theory of "Gestalt" and the second, is interested in his concepts in therapy, which, among other things, resulted in the existence of the Museum of Images of the Unconscious, in Rio de Janeiro.

Roughly, Gestalt psychology has to do with the phenomena of human perception. Its propagators were saying and they say, that does not come to the attention of all parties, but rather the opposite. That is, it is only through the whole brain can decode and assimilate an image. For Geraldo de Barros, the design was not a representation but something in itself.

Nise da Silveira introduced to their patients a revolutionary therapy through art. His research in occupational therapy are crucial. Part of this result came to be exposed at the 16th Sao Paulo Biennial, 1981 in Unusual Art exhibition, which was curated national teacher, historian and art critic Annateresa Fabris, key author of several books on photography.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

Because these two "characters" are important in the work of Geraldo de Barros? A promoted within the artist a solid conceptual and political baggage with respect to form and space. The other, puts him in touch with the powerful forces of the unconscious, that somehow give meaning to its geometry, its abstraction, the reflections on the figure, inextricably linked to freedom of establishment you are looking for from the beginning.

In 1950 the artist exposes your photo creations at the Art Museum of Sao Paulo - MASP. Named Fotoforma, he even took care of the assembly, creating special media for their works, that would be copied by a few decades after photographers, which reveals his inventive power.

Certain statements by the artist are still controversial among the purists. For him it was in error and accident, living creating photo. Also, the aprenzidado, were secondary technique. The only enough to express what he wanted. The technical sophistication of the results led to the impoverishment of the imagination and creativity, thinking such negative situations for the photographic art, he said.

However, if we both series, and Fotoformas Leftovers, or even some single images, we see that a lot of development on top of this "accident." There is a strictly geometric in its images, so make the most Its design, like a building objective and intentional.

In the triangle Fotoformas light shadow-transparency is exceptional, extremely elaborate. What nut makes you think that such statements were used to heat up the debate, poking, pictorialists. The presence of humor in them is evident, and does not contradict his virtuosity plastic.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

The "graffiti" on top of forms found in walls, very different from those produced by Brassai (1899-1984), are also produced. The images can be random, but the risks are intentional in the negative. In the case of "fit" the base form with the final form. Something extremely creative today, pure avant-garde.

The such "Leftovers" is derived from the random and family photos, but processes are developed, when it reverses the white sky, leaving the black. Or when the course of a lake or a mountain in the snow, have the same fate. We are talking about here, the infinite possibility of the subversion of order, which links directly to artist freedom desired by the photographer.

Paulo Herkenhoff, critic and curator, said the photograph of the artist was governed by the rupture. There is a refusal to the existing order, summarized in the logic of looking at aesthetics. Also according to the critic, his "Fotoformas" although on the basis of the real, operating in the field of visual perception as abstract construction.

In the series "glazing" the photographer subverts the order again, going against the grain of the proposed ancestor of the photographic image. It does not produce a matrix for their copies, but one piece. A photographic object, once again being innovative.

Fragments of negative and positive form an amalgam, in color and black and white (plus a subversion to the dictates) revealing through the adhesive that sustain the path, showing the scenes of his proposal. Cellophane, glass, tools such as drypoint etching, or paints as naquim, were also used. In his "Collages" Generated de Barros used most of the elements found in the early grades.

In 1952 Geraldo de Barros takes part in one of the most important art movements, the Brazilian Break, which helps create in the company of great artists such as Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973) and Luiz Sacilotto (1924-2003). To critics, the figurative end of hedonism is announced by the Concrete Art movement in Brazil.

Rubens Fernandes Junior, to produce the show (s) symmetries note, among other things, that (...) a photograph of the artist carries a spark of greater transformation than it might appear and what was initially analyzed (...). This wise analysis, has to prove the impact that his picture still causes today. How much it is still subversive, given the established art.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

From 1954 leaves the photographic production is dedicated to the design, and works as a designer in creating the project Unilabor, a furniture factory with collectivist rules of management and a landmark of Brazilian design. In 1966 the furniture store opens Hobjeto, the year by joining the artists Nelson Leiner and Wesley Duke Lee, founded the historic Rex Gallery.

The Hobjeto once had 700 employees in 1972 and was awarded several times for his furniture designs. The artist riding his studio at the factory. In 1979, in full economic crisis affecting the country and the factory, Geraldo de Barros esquemia suffers a brain. The first of a series of four, and abandons the Hobjeto. Also abandoned figurative painting, returning to the subject started in the 50 geometry.

Geraldo de Barros. Fotoformas and Leftovers

In 1993, the artist presents for the first time in Europe the full range of their Fotoformas, the Musée d'Elysée, giving an international dimension to his work. Already since 1988, weakened by disease and with the help of photographer Ana Moraes, his assistant, performs over 250 cuts in negative travel and family. In this new series, "Leftovers" the artist walks with enthusiasm until his death in 1998.

Fotoformas and Leftovers

The two volumes published by Cosacnaify, are the main reference for the important work of Geraldo de Barros. "Fotoformas" is the second edition, plus critical texts by Charles Henri Favrod, Max Bill, Pietro Maria Bardi, Radha Abramo, Paulo Herkenhoff, Eugen Gomringer, Nelson Aguilar and Adon Peres, extracted from reviews published in newspapers and catalogs of shows artist.

They are fundamental in understanding closer to his work. This is a facsimile edition of the book published in 1993, when the show "Geraldo de Barros, photographer" at the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo. This retrospective was originally held in Lausanne, the same year, the Musee de L'Elisée.

"Leftovers" is unprecedented, and is the return of the artist `photography, 30 years later. Brings a text organizer Fernandes Junior, "The (S) symmetries," one of the best analyzes of the artist's work done today. There is also an excellent chronology, written by Michel Favre, along with pictures in the gallery of award-winning shows Brito Cimino. The issues are bilingual and comes in a box.

Juan Esteves, photographer, has been writing his articles since 1988 in the Folha de S. Paul. It was Iris Photo Magazine columnist and editor and columnist for the Fotosite. You Better Shoot magazine columnist and contributor to text and images for magazines such as Mitsubishi, Living Alone, Travel and More Cosac Naify. Now, the blog of Paraty in Focus, Juan put unpublished or published - the last, to update and reissue made ​​especially for this blog.