Abstract Gouache Painting by Hércules Barsotti

Hércules Rubens Barsotti (born July 20, 1914 – December 21, 2010) was a Brazilian painter, graphic designer, scenographer and costume designer. He was a member of the Neo-Concrete Movement.
Barsotti was born in São Paulo, Brazil.

Barsotti studied drawing under Henrique Vio from 1926–1933 at the Colegio Dante Alighieri in São Paulo. In 1934 he began his studies in Industrial Chemistry at the Mackenzie Institute and receiving his degree in 1937.

As he started his work as an artist in the 1950s, he drew two-dimensional art that was usually black and white. These drawings used geometric shapes and lines that were mostly mathematical and technical. He exemplified formal elements related to the Neo-Concrete movement. Although technical is his own right, he was not affiliated with the Concretist group, and he created his own forms of art. His areas of expression is what separated him from the Concrete movement into the neo-concrete movement, but since he generally used formal and somewhat rigid geometric lines and shapes, he was considered part of the Neo-Concrete movement.

In the 1950s, he created many pieces of art with ink on paper that utilize lines to create aesthetically pleasing angles and space in his artwork. In 1970, he drew Estudos e Formas com los Angulos Cor I, which was drawn with pencil on paper. This includes geometric shapes, specifically what appears to be diagonal squares with lines connecting the top and bottom corners. This artwork came with his slight change in style in the 1960s to use monochromatic planes, which were toned-down with some geometric inflections.[11] Another aspect of change in the 1960s was his exploration of colors with different formats. He started to use various geometric shapes in rhythmic sequences to explore different areas of space in his drawings. As an act to counter the Concrete movement, he used colors that was specifically rejected in the Concrete movement. This was a significant way that many of the Neo-Concrete movement artists used to express themselves uniquely in a way that set them apart from the Concrete movement.

Many of Barsotti’s later artwork presented as acrylic paint on a shaped canvas. These canvases would be in the form of simple shapes, such as a circle, square or triangle. Each have two shades of the same color with a slit in the middle. These particular paintings were a part of Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and made in 1996.