Organized by the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) in January 1951, Fotoformas was one of the first exhibitions of photographs to be organized by a Brazilian cultural institution. The abstract nature of the exhibit undoubtedly surprised many in the local art milieu. It was also one of the first exhibitions of a specifically constructive body of work by a Brazilian artist. In the late 1940s the Brazilian painter and photographer Geraldo de Barros (1923–98) read the thesis written by the critic Mário Pedrosa (1900–81) on Gestalt’s Theory, which was presented in 1949 and later published as Da Natureza Afetiva da Forma na Obra de Arte (Rio de Janeiro: Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura, 1952). Based on that theory, Pedrosa started developing his thesis in support of abstract art.
In the early years of the following decade—after a study tour in Europe with the future journalist Cláudio Abramo—de Barros was among those who signed the radical manifesto of the grupo ruptura (with a lower case ‘r’ as in the group’s logo) that established the foundations of what would become the São Paulo Concrete movement headed by Waldemar Cordeiro. In 1950, de Barros and the Hungarian photographer Thomaz Farkas (1921–2011) were charged with installing a photographic laboratory at the MASP; de Barros was able to use that equipment to assemble his Fotoformas, which had been evolving over the years. The artist referred to that when he was interviewed by L. Wiznitzer, and the interview was published in the magazine Letras e Artes (Rio de Janeiro, August 10, 1952): He was asked, “Can there be abstract photography?” “Yes…!” was his reply, which he repeated in a subsequent article, “A sala de fotografia,” that was published in the 87th issue of the Boletim Foto-Cine Bandeirantes, São Paulo, February 1954. His poster was awarded the “Cuarto Centenario de la Ciudad de São Paulo” prize (1954), and he and the Dominican Fathers founded the Cooperativa de Producción de Muebles Unilabor—which, decades later, would become Móveis Hobjeto. In the 1970s he produced a vast number of outdoor advertising posters in São Paulo, and some of his concrete works were shown at a Venice Biennial organized by Radha Abramo. Due to several ischemic strokes in the 1990s he continued to design his concrete projects (on squared paper) that were made of Formica. In 1996 he once again began working with negatives with the help of his assistant, the photographer Ana Moraes. That was when he started producing the Sobras series.
The author of this essay, Pietro Maria Bardi (1900–99), was the director and driving force behind the construction of the current MASP building on Avenida Paulista (designed by his wife, the architect Lina Bo Bardi). He was a highly influential cultural promoter in Brazil, where he emigrated from Italy after the war. In addition to providing the museum with its own photography department, through which he encouraged and promoted photography’s recognition as an art form in Brazil, he also founded a design school at the museum and published the magazine Mirante das Artes.
