The Minas Gerais artist Amilcar de Castro (1920-2002), a pillar of Brazilian contemporary sculpture, became known as the inventor of a technique that revolutionized three-dimensional art in the country in the 1950s: the cut-and-fold, an operation whereby twisted and folded iron sheets interact with space to create geometric figures.

Despite evoking a historical procedure from the suprematists, for whom plane was a starting point for attaining three-dimensionality, this operation sets itself apart from the early 20^th-century Russian avantgarde. Only in the second half of that century did Brazilian artists resume the experiments of the early constructivists ­(and here is where Amilcar comes in with his cut-and-fold, converting drawings on paper into sculptures).

A sculptor, engraver, draftsman, graphic designer, and professor, Amilcar was looked up to by contemporary artists who went down this trail, carved out in the 1950s, as abstract language gained traction in Brazil with the advent of a generation marked by concrete art and the development of Brazilian modern architecture, translated into the construction of Brasília.

Trained as an artist by the painter Guignard (1896-1962) and the sculptor Franz Weissmann (1911-2005), Amilcar picked up from the former the lesson of the irreversibility of sculptural work, using hard pencils in his drawing course, which rendered pointless any attempt to erase the steady lines from number 7 lead.

From Weissmann, he adopted the rigor of constructive syntax and formal synthesis, yet a basic distinction remained between their works despite the structural thinking that they shared. In Weissmann’s case, his sculptures also rely on the plane as a starting point, yet aim to mimic a ribbonlike motion, as did Max Bill (1908-1994). In Amilcar’s sculpture, there is no suggestion of motion. Inertia prevails, as though time were in suspension.

At any rate, the impact of witnessing Tripartite unity, by Switzerland’s Max Bill, at the 1^st São Paulo Biennial (1951), was what drove Amilcar to create his first constructive sculpture, with which he joined, in 1953, the second edition of the international exhibit. However, unlike Max Bill, Amilcar incorporated elements other than the formal ones which characterize European concretism (and his joining the neo-concrete movement, in 1959, reaffirms his commitment to novel procedures).

Amilcar does not exclusively seek a fine arts solution by abolishing soldering in his iron sculptures. By working from a rectangular or a circular plane to interact with space and create a three-dimensional object, he averts the conventional sculptural procedure of adding or subtracting matter. In other words, Amilcar went farther than Max Bill by incorporating into his pieces the presence of time (namely, rust on the metal sheets) as an attestation of his connection to the history and the nature of Minas.

Although the cut-and-fold technique is central to Amilcar’s work, he also employed other materials, such as wood, glass, and granite. The black wood (baraúna) sculptures he created late in his life are lesser known than his iron and weathering steel works, yet comprise an equally important, though seldom seen set.

His restless experimentation garnered attention not only in Brazil. The internationally renowned North American sculptor Richard Serra (1938-2024) was astonished upon witnessing, ten years ago, a piece from the cut-and-fold series in the garden of Casa da Gávea, the Rio de Janeiro headquarters of Instituto Moreira Salles. Serra identified with Amilcar’s work, seeing in him a newfound partner who was no minimalist, yet believed that less is more.