Untitled (Abstract) (Sem título (Abstrato))

Geraldo de BarrosWW-1951-106741

1951·Gelatin silver print·Image/paper: 35 × 27.2 cm (13 13/16 × 10 3/4 in.)

<p>Geraldo de Barros pushed photography to its limits. This image’s network of pale lines offers few clues to its real-world subject. Instead it hovers at the very edge of visibility, inviting viewers to contemplate the subtle range of gradations between white and palest gray.</p> <p>A key figure in Brazilian modern art, Geraldo de Barros worked across the fields of painting, photography, and graphic and industrial design. His approach to photography resonated with a growing abstract art movement in Brazil: he employed multiple exposures, drew and etched on negatives, and reassembled fragments of negatives into new compositions.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1951
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Image/paper: 35 × 27.2 cm (13 13/16 × 10 3/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Geraldo de Barros

Artist

Geraldo de Barros

Photography

Geraldo de Barros was a Brazilian photographer and graphic designer whose formal experiments in the 1950s anticipated much of modernist visual culture. Working in São Paulo during the postwar period, he developed a distinctive approach to photomontage and abstraction that drew from both European constructivism and indigenous Brazilian design traditions. His work bridged photography, graphic design, and printmaking, treating the photograph as a malleable compositional field rather than a documentary record.

São Paulo, Brazil

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