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GERALDO DE BARROS
GERALDO DE BARROS
MAMCO GENEVE
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
FEB 22 - JUN 19 2022
Geraldo de Barros (1923–1998), was a Brazilian painter, photographer and designer, and a founding member of the Brazilian Concrete art movement. De Barros initially trained as an economist, but in the mid-1940s, while still employed at Banco do Brasil, he began studying art. He first made a name for himself as a photographer with the abstract series entitled Fotoforma, which he showed in 1951 at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art. The unconventional nature of this work won him a scholarship that enabled him to study and travel in Europe. There he met Max Bill and François Morellet, with whom he maintained close ties. De Barros was particularly interested in Gestalt theory and the geometry of Concrete art. When he returned to Brazil he founded the Grupo Ruptura, along with Waldemar Cordeiro and Luis Sacilotto, among others. The group’s aim was to align Brazilian art with the modernization movement then sweeping the country. In 1956 de Barros took part in the first International Exhibition of Concrete Art in Sao Paulo, and in 1960 his work was included in the international Konkrete Kunst exhibition organized in Zurich by Max Bill. Meanwhile, in 1954, his interest in the applied arts led him to found Unilabor, a utopian cooperative devoted to the construction of modern furniture. MAMCO’s exhibition retraced this trajectory, taking as its point of departure de Barros’s return to concrete art at the end of the 1970s when, abandoning the use of brushes and canvas, he took up new materials such as Formica.
For the occasion of the opening of the Spring exhibition at MAMCO Geneve, Side Gallery produced a short film illustrating the restoration of a masterpiece by Gerlado de Barros. This unique bookcase was one of six important furniture pieces produced by Gerlado de Barros and Unilabor that was exhibited at the show. Founded by Gerlado de Barros in 1954, Unilabor became a mechanism of modernization from below, producing furniture based on his constructive references with function outside of cognitive perception. Unilabor was unity in work and a unity through work. A self-managed factory run by the workers, it was a system of production that aimed to unify not only form and function, but also a living community and production processes. The discreet beauty of Unilabor furniture pieces is certainly informed by this balance of forces. In its context, Unilabor in fact quickly became a social model. It was a working environment that was perceived as healthy.
The bookcase that was shown at the exhibition was produced by Unilabor in 1955 and commissioned for the family home of one of its members, the bookcase is made of jacaranda wood with brass details. The bookcase model is adaptable and capable of infinite configurations. The versatility and assembly possibilities allow for a multitude of utilisation purposes, the kind of ingenuity most representative of the production philosophy of Unilabor. Side Gallery acquired the bookcase and oversaw its seamless surface restoration. The approach was aimed at respecting the history and integrity of the piece, while also producing an enduring masterpiece. With relatively minor loss or need for extensive rebuilding - the scope of the restoration involved conservation cleaning, painting, removing scratches, and repairing some damage to the veneer. The bookcase had suffered natural age-related wear and tear; likely exacerbated by climatic conditions. The veneer was therefore detached from the solid jacaranda wood, some missing pieces were replaced with small samples of jacaranda, this replacement was patinated for a seamless match with the existing veneer. While smaller chips to the veneer were restored with the use of a special resin. These sections of veneer were then relaid in the traditional way and once reaffirmed the bookcase was polished to replicate the original finish. With an in-depth knowledge of the works of Geraldo de Barros and significant restoration expertise, the bookcase was revived as perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of Brazilian design, or at least one that makes full use of the beauty of Jacaranda wood.
Geraldo de Barros (Chavantes 27th February 1923 - Sao Paulo 17th April 1998) was a prolific artist across various media. He experimented relentlessly with utopian ideals, divulged through his exploration of furniture design from the mid-1950s till the late 1980s. While undoubtedly Brazilian, he drew much of his aesthetic influences from European avant-garde culture, from De Stijl and Bauhaus to Gestalt psychology.
Starting his artistic career in painting, he then found himself in photography; de Barros held a successful exhibition "Fotoformas" in 1950, the title being a reference to Gestalt. His artistic trajectory put him at the forefront of experimental photography, and in 1951 he was awarded a scholarship from the French government, which allowed him to travel and study in France. While in Europe, he also traveled to Zurich, where he met Max Bill, a former Bauhaus graduate who was collaborating at the time with the Scholl Foundation on the creation of a new design institute that had the ambition to continue the Bauhaus traditions with the integration of the human and technical element in design teaching and practice. Max Bill invited Geraldo to visit the institute (not officially opened till 1953) in Ulm, Germany, where he consequently spent some weeks attending workshops and was subsequently heavily influenced by what would be Max Bill's idea of Gute Form. The essence of Gute Form was the belief that objects, if carefully designed, can bring art into everybody's home, and art can be a way not only to reflect on the world but to make visible connections and abstractions without using verbal language. Here we can see a clear link between Geraldo's future ideals for furniture design and Bill's philosophy.
After his return to Sao Paulo and following further success as an artist, a change of government was to change Brazil. A new wave of investments from Europe was inaugurated by the president with the motto 'fifty years in five.' Modernization and industrialisation were being imposed from above. Geraldo de Barros, along with a Dominican Priest, Friar João Batista Pereira dos Santos, embarked on his first and most crucial venture as a furniture designer. In 1954 Unilabor was created and became a mechanism of modernization from below.
Unilabor was unity in work and a unity through work. The workers ran a self-managed e factory; it was a system of production that aimed to unify not only form and function but also a living community and production processes. This balance of forces certainly informed the discreet beauty of Unilabor furniture pieces. The tension that affected the products of the national wave of industrialization is clearly absent from the relaxed, warm lines of these pieces. In its context, Unilabor, in fact, quickly became a social model. It was a working environment that was perceived as healthy. It was created to be less a company, more a community.
The other two founding members of Unilabor, the engineer Justino Cardoso and the toolmaker Antônio Thereza provided specialist knowledge and skills while Geraldo de Barros made the drawings. Geraldo's approach to design was very humanistic. He intended to socialise art and its messages. By using the products, he designed for their daily activities, owners of Unilabor furniture were using art. For Geraldo, the designer's role consisted in mediating between society and industry, aiming to solve the tension between quantity and quality. João Batista and Geraldo agreed that if market trends ruled manufacturing, it eventually became informed by quantitative interests only, with a disadvantageous effect on the quality of the product and the working and living conditions of the workmen. Despite its ideals, Unilabor eventually ran into economic difficulties and eventually only lasted thirteen years.
Geraldo then dedicated himself to the furniture factory he created in 1964 with a former Unilabor cabinet-maker, Aloísio Bione. Rather than being a company with a clear aesthetics, as many Italian furniture manufacturers of the nineteen-sixties, to which it can be compared, Hobjeto Indústria e Comércio de Móveis was characterised by extreme flexibility of the form, which stays constant throughout the several lines of products Geraldo de Barros designed over the years. The furniture was also progressive, evolving to follow the dominant shapes of the time: more angular and squarer when the furniture was more geometric; more rounded when the products had softer lines; and finally made of long, continuous lines when Hobjeto introduced a furniture family made with tubular elements.
Both in the case of Unilabor and Hobjeto, interestingly, the essential component of Geraldo's design philosophy is the chair. This is particularly fascinating, especially if we consider that at the time, modular systems were prevalent amongst most industrial designers. While armchairs inspire intimacy and solitude, chairs, like sofas, have a significant social aspect. The proportions of Geraldo's chairs multiply into larger furniture items, and the environments arranged for publicity photographs are often constructed around the chair's presence.
