1945, he began studying art with Arpad Szenes, Axel Leskoschek and Henrique Boese. With the psychiatrist Nise da Silveira, founded a studio that held painting classes for patients of psychiatric hospital in Engenho de Dentro. With a grant from the French government, he moved to Paris in November 1951. After completing his studies at the Ulm School of Design under Max Bill, he set up his own graphic design studio and also became affiliated with the Zero group, an experimental collective from Düsseldorf that ran a magazine of the same name.

At the beginning of the 1960s, he began collaborating with the Yugoslavian community of artists active in the field of Concrete Art and Op Art. He contributed to the organization of the first New Tendencies international exhibition in Zagreb in 1961. He was one of the pioneers of abstractionism in Brazil and specialised in creating posters, winning prizes in this field in Germany. He took part in the São Paulo International Biennale several times (1951, 1961, 1969, 1975, etc.), and was also present at the Kassel Documenta (1964), the Venice Biennale (1964, 1986) and the Tokyo Print Biennale (awarded in 1968).