Anna Bella Geiger is one of the most prominent artists of the Brazilian art scene of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. She studied under Fayga Ostrower (1920-2001) and in 1953 presented her paintings at the National Exhibition of Abstract Art alongside those of future members of the Frente Group and Neo-Concrete Movement. During this time, she travelled to North America several times and studied art history in New York. From 1960 to 1965, she showed her abstract engravings at various exhibitions in South America and Europe, including the 5^th Biennale of Young Artists in Paris in 1967. Awards and growing critical acclaim earned her a teaching position at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio in 1968. During the political unrest of the mid-60s, A. B. Geiger temporarily gave up painting in favour of other mediums more likely to express her outlook on the social realities of the time. For the installation Circumambulation (1972), she combined Super 8 film, photography, and text. The piece reflected her growing interest in anthropology and geography, which she began to express in 1974 in her photographic engravings and conceptual photographic pieces. In 1977, she used postcards – a modest and vernacular form – to ironize and question her status as an artist and citizen: Brasil natal/Brasil alienígena (“Native Brazil/Alien Brazil”, 1977) echoes the contradictory condition of indigenous populations, which Brazilian society both discriminates against and idealises.

In the 1980s, A. B. Geiger reverted to a more pictorial approach and in 1987 she and Fernando Cocchiarale published Abstracionismo geométrico e informal, a vanguarda brasileira nos anos cinqüenta (“Geometric and Informal Abstraction: The Brazilian Avant-Garde in the 1950s”). Since the 1990s, she has created metal and wax objects such as Frontiçeiros, sculptures that border on both abstraction and figuration. Her works have been shown regularly since the 1960s and are featured in various international collections.