Hélio Oiticica

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Hélio Oiticica

Hélio Oiticica, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, was the son of an entomologist who was also a photographer and painter, and the grandson of a philologist and anarchist leader. Although well-known in Brazil, Hélio Oiticica has only gradually come to be recognized internationally as one of the most profound and adventurous artists of recent times.

Hélio Oiticica was both artist and thinker. Positioning himself audaciously between the avant-garde, Brazilian popular culture, the realities of Third World «underdevelopment» and ‘60s radicalism, he came to reflect deeply on the issues concerning «art», «invention», and «liberty» in contemporary conditions.

A product of the brilliant explosion of artistic activity in Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s, which encompassed music, cinema, architecture, poetry and the visual arts, Hélio Oiticica took an advanced position with his innovative Bólides, Penetrables and Parangolés of the mid ‘60s. Later he spent periods in London and New York before returning to Brazil, where he died in 1980 at the age of 43.

A catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition with texts by Haroldo de Campos, Guy Brett, Waly Salomão and Catherine David . The book also contains a wide selection of reproductions of the artist’s work, sketches, drawings and plans for projects, as well as texts and notes by Oiticica himself, all accompanied by extensive biographical material.