This book on artist Anna Bella Geiger forms part of the ABC—Arte Brasileira Contemporânea—a collection published by the Fundação Nacional de Artes (Funarte), a government organization with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. In this volume, critic and curator Fernando Cocchiarale provides an overview of Geiger’s development. He discusses her abstract works from the fifties, her  “visceral phase” in the sixties, and her experimental production from the seventies, which included collective projects (Circumambulatio, 1972), cultural research (Situações-limite, 1975; Sobre a arte, 1983; Brasil Nativo / Brasil Alienígena, 1977), and experiments with different artistic languages such as video, photography, and printmaking. Cocchiarale pays particular attention to three series (Totality, Production, and Yearning), which deal with art and Brazilian culture. In the critic’s words, those series “reveal a critical posture that contests the statements that form the foundation of the Western tradition.”  

The ABC—Arte Contemporânea Brasileira—a collection launched by the Fundação Nacional das Artes (FUNARTE) in 1978 would become a bibliographical point of reference due to its pioneering approach to Brazilian art from the sixties and seventies. The series, which was published over the course of sixteen years, included books on major artists of the period such as Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933), Carlos Vergara (b. 1941), Rubens Gerchman (1942–2008), Artur Barrio (b. 1945), Antonio Dias (b. 1944), Wesley Duke Lee (1931–2010),  Lygia Clark (1920–88), Cildo Meireles (b. 1948), Waltércio Caldas (b. 1946), Lygia Pape (1927–2004), and Antonio Manuel (b. 1947). The outstanding art historians and curators who contributed to the collection were, among many others, Ronaldo Brito (b. 1949), Paulo Sergio Duarte, Fernando Cocchiarale, Helio Oiticica (1937–1980), Mario Pedrosa (1900–1981), Paulo Venâncio Filho (b. 1953), Frederico Morais (b. 1936), and Ferreira Gullar (b. 1930).

The work of Polish-born Brazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933) is characterized by the use of different means of expression. Her production in drawing and printmaking first became known in Río de Janeiro in the fifties. In the seventies, her simultaneous work in a number of different languages (video, photography, drawing, printmaking, text, photocopy) laid the foundation for her radical opposition to the art system. During those years, she became an adjunct member of the educational staff at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Río). Her work in education at MAM-Río led to the event Circumambulatio [for the presentation of that event, see ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1110490)]. Later, she would exhibit work at MAM-Río’s Project Room and contribute to the magazine Malasartes. In the seventies, Geiger—along with Ivens Machado (b. 1942), Fernando Cocchiarale (b. 1951), curator Paulo Herkenhoff (b. 1949), and others—formed part of a group of artists based in Río doing research on new visual technologies.

Though he was active as an artist in the seventies, in the eighties Fernando Cocchiarale (b. 1951) became one of the most coherent critics and curators on the Brazilian art scene. His essay on Geiger entitled “O pão nosso de cada dia” (doc. no. 1110557) was published in Situações-limite (catalogue to the Venice Biennale, 1980). With Machado, he coauthored a text on MAM-Rio’s Project Room (doc. no. 1110602). Art critic Roberto Pontual’s “Os dois Brasis” (doc. no. 1110617), published in Jornal do Brasil (December 1977), provides an analysis of Brasil Nativo – Brasil Alienígena [Native Brazil-Alien Brazil], another work by Geiger from that stage of her career. For Geiger’s own words on her production from those years, see “Depoimento” published in Anna Bella Geiger – Gravuras em cor (Rio de Janeiro: Galeria Bonino, 1974), (doc. no. 1111066).