This essay was published in the leaflet produced for the 1960 solo exhibition of Brazilian painter Willys de Castro at the Galeria Aremar in the city of Campinas. The artist himself defines the most distinctive quality of his visual art, which he refers to in dynamic terms as an “active object.” His goal is to merge the idea, the support, and the material into one single unit to create his art. According to Willys de Castro, the term “active object” suggests an autonomous work of art—that is, something that does not stagnate—because it infuses its meaning into the space that surrounds it. In other words, its presence is disturbing because it triggers new perceptive phenomena and new meanings. 

This document is part of The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 

Willys de Castro (1926–88), a painter, printmaker, draftsman, set designer, and graphic artist from Minas Gerais moved to São Paulo in 1941 to study with André Font. He produced his first abstract-geometrical drawings in the early 1950s. He and Hércules Barsotti (1914?2010)—his lifelong partner—opened a graphic arts studio. On his return from a study trip to Europe, he began to feel greater affinity for the “Neo-Concrete” movement in Rio de Janeiro, headed by Ferreira Gullar. From then (1959) until 1962 he worked on his “objetos ativos” series that explored the point of transition between plane and volume by using certain geometrical “trompe l’œil” effects, while questioning the need for a canvas as a support for a work of visual art.       

This essay discusses Willys de Castro’s artistic approach to his “objetos ativos,” which made an important contribution to the Brazilian Constructive movement in the 1960s. His works prompted the viewer to move around in order to appreciate their full effect.

In 1960—the year of his exhibition, when this essay was published—de Castro showed his “objetos ativos” at the II Exposição de Arte Neoconcreta in Rio de Janeiro and later on at the Galeria Aremar in Campinas (in the state of São Paulo). This gallery was an important forum for the Concrete and Neo-Concrete movements, as can be seen in the article by the leader of the Concrete group in São Paulo, Waldemar Cordeiro, “[Produto direto de uma atitude crítica]” [see doc. no. 1087239].