Geraldo De Barros Brazil, 1923-1988

Geraldo De Barros was a Brazilian painter, photographer and designer. 

Born in Chavantes, Brazil in 1923, Geraldo de Barros was active as a furniture designer from the mid 1950s onwards. In 1954 he founded Unilabor with João Batista Pereira dos Santos, a Dominican friar he had met two years earlier. Unilabor was managed by its employees, and all benefits were shared equally between them, thus becoming the first communitarian business in modern Brazilian history. Unilabor quickly grew to become one of the country’s most important furniture companies. However, internal disputes led to Barros's dismissal in 1964 and the closure of the company in 1967. 

Geraldo de Barros continued to design furniture, creating Hobjeto a few months later. He achieved wide success in the 1970s, but left the company in 1979, after his first heart attack. 

An exponent of the avant-garde in Brazilian art, he was a precursor of concrete art and a pioneer of abstract photography (1945–1951). He went back to photography at the end of his life.