This thesis looks at the work of the art critic, art historian and professor of Columbia University, Rosalind Krauss. Organized in five chapters, it contemplates the historical phases of her intellectual trajectory, from the 1960s to the present day. The hypothesis that guides this work runs as follows: Krauss essays should be organized as overlapping layers of distinct formalist currents, with special emphasis on Greenbergian Formalism, Russian Formalism and French Structuralism. This research intends to demonstrate that Krauss, even in a remarkably pluralistic context of contemporary artistic practices, has never discarded reflecting on the formal structures that engender the art works, that is, their mediums. The essayist s contribution is here considered as a prism through which it is possible to identify distinct voices that circumscribe her discursive field: the historical apology of abstract art by Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried; The generation of thinkers around the American periodicals Artforum and October; Merleau-Ponty s phenomenology; later Wittgenstein s philosophy; Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan s structuralism; And Jacques Derrida s poststructuralism as well. In short, this project offers to Brazilian readers a critical reading of the work done by one of the dominant voices of contemporary art criticism.