Sculptor Amilcar de Castro started to attend the drawing and painting course offered by Alberto da Veiga Guignard back in 1943, while he was in his third year at the Law School of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte. His sculpture starts from a metal sheet (in the shape of a circle, rectangle, or square) that gets a three-dimensional aspect after being cut and folded. There is no addition or subtraction of matter. In 1952, he moved to Rio de Janeiro and signed the Neoconcrete Manifesto. As a layout designer, he did the graphic renovation of Jornal do Brasil in the 1950s.

In 1965, Amilcar de Castro was the first Brazilian artist to receive the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation scholarship. He participated in numerous exhibitions, among which were several editions of the São Paulo Bienal.