Hélio Oiticica

Hélio Oiticica was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937; despite being well known in Brazil, it was from a large installation at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1969 that he began to be gradually recognized internationally as one of the most profound and adventurous artists of recent times. Oiticica was both an artist and a thinker. Placing himself audaciously between the avant-garde, Brazilian popular culture, the realities of “underdevelopment” and the radicalism of the 1960s, he made a deep reflection on the issues concerning “art”, “invention” and “freedom” in our contemporary world. In the pages of this book you will find many of the texts that the artist wrote to understand and communicate his work, they are written in conjunction with his work in which he energetically develops his views on art and culture, from which he analyzes the Brazilian social reality immersed in the economic and social oppression of the globalized world. It also contains essays that friends and critics wrote for the original edition, published in parallel with the first major retrospective of the artist, in 1992.