Amilcar de Castro’s work is centered on a profound exploration of form and synthesis, in sculptures and drawings on paper and canvas. From the 1950s onwards, he had a significant impact on the renewal of artistic debates in Brazil, incorporating themes posed by the historical avant-garde, abandoning representation and conceiving a sculpture technique based on the plane. 

Employing synthetic and precise gestures, such as cutting and bending steel sheets, the artist renders spatiality and architectural scale to single volumes of matter without adding or subtracting any material. The prevalence of simple geometric shapes and indentations that result from these operations constitutes positive and negative spaces on the surfaces, creating new virtual shapes and volumes in relation to the observer. Originating from projective logic and industrial techniques, his work pushes the strictness of the material and of rationality towards lightness and movement. Such plasticity has been developed throughout the artist’s career in media such as glass, wood, marble, or even dense iron blocks, where volume becomes the main object of interest. 

His artistic training began with classes in drawing and painting with Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896-1962) and sculpture with Franz Weissmann (1911-2005). In 1952, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to work as a designer for various newspapers. Amilcar de Castro took part in several editions of the prestigious Salão Nacional de Belas Artes and Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna between the 1940s and 1950s, a period which marked the official recognition of his artistic career. He took part in the 1st National Exhibition of Concrete Art, presented at MAM São Paulo and MAM Rio de Janeiro. He won the Guggenheim Prize twice, in 1968/69 and 1970/71. He had his first solo show in New York, at the Kornblee Gallery (1969), a gallery specialized in Constructive art, and until then restricted to North American artists.  

Amilcar was the honored artist in the 5th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, 2005. He had special rooms dedicated to his work in many editions of the Bienal de São Paulo and was featured in six instances of the Panorama de Arte Atual Brasileira, at the MAM São Paulo (1972, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1985, 1987). He has had several retrospective shows dedicated to his work, including Esculturas e desenhos, at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2001); Amilcar de Castro, at MAM Rio de Janeiro (2014); and Amilcar de Castro: na dobra do mundo, at Mube (2021). 

His work is included in collections such as MoMA, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA; The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan; Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, UK; Museu Caracas, Venezuela; Instituto Inhotim, Brazil; Museu da Pampulha, Brazil; Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Brazil; MAM Rio de Janeiro; Brazil; MAM São Paulo, Brazil; and Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil. 

Instituto Amilcar de Castro