Hélio Oiticica
1937–1980 · Brazilian painter and visual artist, key figure of Neo-Concretism and environmental art
Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro, 1937 - Rio de Janeiro, 1980) was one of the most innovative Brazilian visual artists of the twentieth century. His work, centred on a radical use of colour, moves from abstract painting towards environmental art, and it is now regarded as a key reference for contemporary art in Brazil.
His early works, around 1955-56, follow the geometric abstraction of the São Paulo concretists while he belonged to the Grupo Frente. Between 1957 and 1958 he painted the Metaesquemas, more than 350 monochrome compositions that challenge the flatness of the picture plane. In 1959 he joined the Neo-Concrete movement in Rio, which sought a more phenomenological approach than concrete rationalism. From there he extended colour into space, with the Núcleos and Penetrables, and later with the Bólides and the Parangolés, capes and banners designed to be activated by the body.
After the military regime took power in 1964, his works took on a tone of political resistance, visible in the installation Tropicalia (1967). In 1970 he travelled to New York on a Guggenheim Foundation grant, where he experimented with film and made Cosmococa. He returned to Brazil in 1978 and died in 1980. His legacy is preserved at the Hélio Oiticica Art Center in Rio, founded in 1996.