Geraldo de Barros presents an exhibition of a series of paintings by Brazilian painter and draftsman Nelson Leirner. His text discusses transformations in painting due to the Industrial Revolution and the new social reality that has taken shape around the production of objects. De Barros provides an extensive overview of artistic tendencies including in modern and Concrete art, where the emergence of the idea-object and of the object-painting begins to become known. In the author’s view, mass communication has led to an over valorization of the object and its representation, which is evident in New Figuration and Pop art. By producing paintings on the basis of a preexisting plan, Leirner breaks away from the idea of the artisanal and of the unique object—both of which are central to the art market—in work more in keeping with design. While still unique, objects planned in this way can be produced in large quantity and sold at affordable prices, therefore making the utopia of Concrete art a reality.

Painter, photographer, and furniture designer Geraldo de Barros (1923−98) was a member of the Grupo Ruptura, a group led by Waldemar Cordeiro that supported Concrete art. De Barros began experimenting with photographic negatives in the late forties, producing his Fotoformas. A poster of his design was awarded the prize “IV Centenary of São Paulo City” (1954). Along with Dominican priests, he helped found the Cooperativa de Produção de Movéis Unilabor, which decades later would become Móveis Hobjeto. In the seventies, he produced a vast series of billboards put up in São Paulo. His works of Concrete art were included in the Venice Biennale for which Radha Abramo coordinated Brazil’s participation. Despite a number of strokes he suffered in the nineties, he used graph paper to continue producing Concrete projects in Formica. In 1996, he resumed working with negatives with the help of his assistant, photographer Ana Moraes, and created the Sobras series. In 1965, de Barros exhibited works influenced by Pop art in a show with painter and draftsman Nelson Leirner (b. 1932). In a polemic exhibition that took place in 1967, Leirner proposed a series of multiples entitled “Homenagem a [Lucio] Fontana” that had been awarded at the IX Tokyo Biennial. Leirner’s fundamental concerns include the aesthetic and market value of the work of art and the appropriation of low-culture images and objects. This text by Geraldo de Barros is paradigmatic insofar as it uses Constructivist utopias and mass production to formulate a difference between the project (idea) and the object (work). On a theoretical level, De Barros defends the multiplication of the physical object, which tends to radically reduce market value without a corresponding drop in artistic value. The year this text was published, de Barros stimulated another debate in the Exposição Não Exposição. At that event, which led to the closing of the Rex Gallery, viewers were allowed to take the works on exhibition away with them free of charge. In the IV Salão do Distrito Federal (Brasília), Leirner questioned the jury that had accepted his works from the series “Matéria e Forma,” one of which consisted of the taxonomy of a pig with a ham leg tied to its neck, a work he called Happening da crítica. In conjunction with Flávio Motta, he organized an exhibition of flags in the public space—Avenida Brasil in São Paulo—that ended with the police confiscating the materials and declaring the event an illegal act of an unauthorized sale by street vendors. This text reflects Leirner’s great concern with the irresolvable conundrum of art in consumer society. He formulates an open criticism of mass communication and the way it is handled (or manipulated) by artists.