From 1947 to 1949 Hélio Oiticica attended the Thomson School.
College/University
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Av. Infante Dom Henrique, 85 - Parque do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 20021-140, Brazil
In 1954, Oiticica began to study painting under Ivan Serpa at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.
Career
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
1965
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Hélio Oiticica in his studio, Rio de Janeiro, 1965
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
1966
Hélio Oiticica in 1966.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
1969
London, United Kingdom
Hélio Oiticica (on the ground) and poet Torquato Neto with the artist's Parangolés as part of the Eden experience, Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
1975
Hélio Oiticica and Luiz Carlos Joels in 1975.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
1978
Photo of Hélio Oiticica in 1978.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Photo of Hélio Oiticica.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Portrait of Hélio Oiticica.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Portrait photo of Hélio Oiticica.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica holding his artwork piece Manhattan Brutalista, Objeto Semi-Mágico Trouvée, in a photograph by Robert (Bob) Wolfenson, from the series Jardim da Luz.
Gallery of Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica holding his artwork piece Manhattan Brutalista, Objeto Semi-Mágico Trouvée, in a photograph by Robert (Bob) Wolfenson.
Hélio Oiticica holding his artwork piece Manhattan Brutalista, Objeto Semi-Mágico Trouvée, in a photograph by Robert (Bob) Wolfenson, from the series Jardim da Luz.
Hélio Oiticica was a Brazilian visual artist, painter, performance artist, sculptor, filmmaker, writer and theorist. His works range from abstract geometric paintings to large-scale site-specific artworks. Oiticica was a representative of such styles as Neo-Concretism and Conceptual Art.
Background
Oiticica was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 26, 1937. He was the son of Ângela Santos Oiticica and José Oiticica Filho. Hélio Oiticica had two younger brothers, architect César Oiticica, and Cláudio Oiticica.
The artist's family was well-educated and connected with liberal politics. His father was a teacher of mathematics, and also an engineer, entomologist, and lepidopterologist, a scientist who studied butterflies. Moreover, he was also an insatiable photographer, who created experimental photographs that were new to Brazil.
Oiticica's grandfather was a well-known philologist, who researched literary texts and written records and also published an anarchist newspaper called Ação Direta [Direct Action].
Education
Hélio Oiticica and his brothers were taught at home, being taught mathematics, science, languages, history, geography by their parents, until their father got a fellowship at the Guggenheim Foundation. From 1947 to 1949 the family lived in Washington, D.C. while their father worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Hélio Oiticica and his brothers attended the Thomson School. They also visited museums and attended art exhibitions.
The family returned to Brazil in July 1950. Starting from 1952 Oiticica wrote and translated plays which he staged at home with his brothers and cousins under the direction of their aunt, actress Sônia Oiticica. During December-January 1953, the Oiticica family visited the II Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, which included special galleries dedicated to Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Alexander Calder, and Pablo Picasso.
In 1954, Oiticica began to study painting under Ivan Serpa at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.
Oiticica's works of the mid-1950s were greatly influenced by European modern art movements, particularly Concrete art and De Stijl. In his early paintings he used a palette of strong, bright primary and secondary colours and geometric shapes influenced by such artists as Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich. Oiticica's painting quickly gave way to a much warmer and more subtle palette, as he started to use such colours as orange, yellow, red and brown which he maintained, with rare exceptions, for the rest of his life.
In 1955 Hélio Oiticica came in contact with the Grupo Frente and participates in the group's second exhibition at Rio de Janeiro's Museu de Arte Moderna. It was during this period that he got acquainted with the artist Lygia Clark and art critics Mário Pedrosa and Ferreira Gullar. Around this time he started to paint gouaches on cardboard. In December 1956 he began his work on a series of twenty-seven pieces in this medium, called Secos.
Oiticica took part in the following shows: "Pintura Brasileña Contemporánea" [Contemporary Brazilian Painting], Instituto de Cultura Uruguayo Brasileño (ICUB), Montevideo; III Exposição do Grupo Frente [Third exhibition of Grupo Frente], Itatiaia Country Clube, Resende, State of Rio de Janeiro; "Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta" [National Exhibition of Concrete Art], Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP); IV Exposição do Grupo Frente, Volta Redonda, State of Rio de Janeiro; all of the shows were held in 1956.
Along with Ivan Serpa, Alberto Pinedo, Aluísio Carvão, César Oiticica, and Henry Dobbin, he participated in the organization of the Instituto de Arte Infantil [Children’s Art Institute]. It was a primary school that focused on the teaching of visual arts. The school fuctioned until 1959, and was located in a house at number 39, Rua Lins de Vasconcelos.
In 1959, he became involved in the short-lived but extremely influential Neo-Concrete Movement. During Oiticica’s Neo-Concrete period, he tried to "escape the constraints of painting while remaining in dialogue with it" by utilizing colour in new ways. He painted monochromes entitled Invencoes (Inventions) in 1959. However, the group disbanded in 1961. Hélio Oiticica shifted to conceptual art dealing with ideas of the human body and culture. Oiticica was particularly interested in what creates culture.
Colour became a central subject of Oiticica's oeuvre and he experimented with his paintings and hanging wooden sculptures with subtle (sometimes hardly noticeable) differences in colour within or between the sections. The hanging sculptures gradually grew in scale and his later artworks comprised of many hanging sections forming the overall work.
In the 1960s, Hélio Oiticica created a series of small box shaped interactive sculptures called Bólides (fireballs). These sculptures had panels and doors which viewers could move and explore. In addition to producing Bólides, he devised his first Parangolé. Parangolé series consisted of layers of fabric, plastic and matting intended to be worn like costumes but experienced as mobile sculptures. The first parangolés experiences were made together with dancers from the Mangueira Samba school, where Oiticica was also a participant. His first three pieces of the series included a tent, a banner, and a flag.
The first public presentation of the Parangolé series took place at the MAM-RJ’s “Opinião 65” exhibition in 1965. It was considered to be a breakthrough in the history of Brazilian art. In 1967 he designed Éden, a group of penetrables and suprasensorial propositions for his solo exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 1969, curated by Guy Brett. Oiticica named the exhibition the "Whitechapel experience".
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Oiticica made installations called Penetráveis (penetrables) which viewers could step into and interact with. The most influential of these was Tropicália (1967) which gave its name to the Tropicalismo movement. The work was exhibited at the "Nova Objetividade Brasileira" [New Brazilian Objecthood] show at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro.
On January 1, 1970, he returned to Rio de Janeiro. The same year he participated in the exhibition "Information" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In the 1970s, Oiticica devoted himself mainly to writing and frequently corresponded with several important intellectuals, artists and writers both in Brazil and abroad, including Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Silviano Santiago and Waly Salomão.
Among his later exhibitions were those at "Exposição", Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, and "Metaesquemas", Galeria Ralph Camargo, São Paulo, both in 1972; "Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro" [Brazilian Constructivist Project], Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, in 1977; "Objeto na Arte: Brasil Anos 60" [The Object in Art: Brazil in the 1960s], Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP), São Paulo, in 1978.
On October 17, 2009, a terrifying fire destroyed an enormous amount of the works by Oiticica, approximately 200 paintings. The collection was held at the residence of his brother César Oiticica in Rio de Janeiro. Apart from paintings and the famous Parangolés, the artist's archive of material included drawings, documentaries, notes, and books, which were stored in the collection. Key artworks such as Bólides and Parangolés, including some shown at the 2007 Tate retrospective, were damaged. The cause of the fire is unknown.
Tropicália, Penetrables PN 2 'Purity is a myth' and PN 3 'Imagetical'
Grand Nucleus
Spatial Relief No. 20
painting
Limite-Lumificaças
Metaesquema
Metaesquema 19
Seja Marginal, Seja Herói
Metaesquema
Metaesquema 179
Metaesquema
Metaesquema
Metaesquema (Dois brancos)
Metaesquema 169
Mangúe Bangúe
Untitled
Metaesquema
Metaesquema
Metaesquema 193
Metaesquema
Metaesquema
Metaesquema 169
Metaesquema
Metaesquema
Metaesquema
Metaesquema 153
Metaesquema 198
photo
Jeff wearing p31 parangolé cape 24
M'way ke
sculpture
Spatial Relief (red) REL 036
B11 Box Bólide 09
Views
Quotations:
"Colour is the first revelation of the world."
"The museum is the world, it is the everyday experience."
Membership
Oiticica joined Grupo Frente, founded by Ivan Serpa, in 1955.
Grupo Frente
,
Brazil
1955
Interests
Artists
Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Kazimir Malevich
Connections
Father:
José Oiticica Filho
Mother:
Ângela Santos Oiticica
Grandfather:
José Rodrigues Oiticica
Brother:
César Oiticica
Brother:
Cláudio Oiticica
References
Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium
The most comprehensive study to date of Hélio Oiticica, one of the world’s foremost practitioners of neo-concretism, who is internationally recognized for his innovative and participatory work.
2016
Hélio Oiticica: Folding the Frame
This book examines Oiticica’s impressive works against the backdrop of Brazil’s dramatic postwar push for modernization.
Helio Oiticica: The Body of Color
Drawing on new research and including previously unseen works, this is the most extensive publication yet on this crucial Latin American artist.
2007
Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space
With 100 images, including specially commissioned photography by Iwan Baan of the installation at MOCA, a bibliography, a selected exhibition history and a major essay by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Senior Curator Alma Ruiz, Suprasensorial retrieves these artists’ decisive contributions to contemporary art, acknowledging their previously obscured labors as formative to the ongoing light and space tradition.
2012
Helio Oiticica
This book focuses on works which have rarely been seen elsewhere, works in which Oiticica questions the traditional relationship between the audience and the world of the movies, such as his "quasi-cinemas," which combine slide projections and music.