Willys de Castro, author of the text and longtime friend of Barsotti’s, explains that despite having joined the Grupo Neoconcreto de Rio (led by Ferreira Gullar) in the early 1960s, the artist’s natural tendencies led him to produce drawings that were based on “increasingly organic principles.” The author praises his friend’s discipline and thoroughness in the visual arts, where privilege “falls on order.”
Hércules Barsotti (b. 1914; d. 2010) was a painter, graphic artist, set designer, and costume designer. He and Willys de Castro cofounded the Estúdio de Projetos Gráficos in 1954. He turned his back on Waldemar Cordeiro’s technical-theoretical orthodoxies and became involved with the Neo-Concrete movement in Rio de Janeiro. He spent a year in Europe (1958), where he met Max Bill, who invited him to his international exhibition Konkrete Kunst in Zurich two years later. In 1959 he was awarded the First Prize for Drawing at the V Bienal de São Paulo and the Grand Gold Medal at the Salão de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. In 1963 Barsotti, de Castro, and Waldemar Cordeiro cofounded the Galeria Associação de Artes Visuais Novas Tendências, which operated for three years. Once the gallery opened, Barsotti stopped working in black and white and concentrated on color and its kinetic effects on volume and on the plane. His later works consisted of acrylic paint applied on a shaped canvas.