Artur Barrio

Artur Alípio Barrio de Sousa Lopes was born in Porto, Portugal, in 1945. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1955, where he began his artistic career initially focusing on painting in 1965. From 1967, he attended the National School of Fine Arts (Enba), where he developed the "free notebooks" documenting his exploration of non-traditional artistic languages.

In 1969, Barrio started creating his "Situations", high-impact interventions using organic materials such as garbage, toilet paper, and human debris, culminating in the well-known "Bloody Bundles". These works challenged conventional art norms and critiqued social and political dynamics in Latin America, as detailed in his manifesto written the same year.

In the "From the Body to the Earth" exhibition in 1970 in Belo Horizonte, he scattered the "Bloody Bundles" in a river, documenting the action with photographs, artist notebooks, and Super-8 films. Additionally, Barrio explored installations and sculptures using everyday objects, reflecting on materiality and ephemerality.

Barrio also lived in Africa, France, and the Netherlands, maintaining an active international profile. Since the mid-1990s, his work has been the subject of various publications and exhibitions that seek to revisit and analyze his influence on the contemporary art scene.

Sources:
Photo: http://24.sapo.pt/vida/artigos/artur-barrio-vence-grande-premio-fundacao-edp-arte-2016