Lot 44: Helio Oiticica (1937-1980)

Pinturas neoconcretas tempera on paper each: 6 7/8 x 43/4in. (17.4 x 12cm.) Painted in 1960 PROVENANCE Gift from the artist to present owner LITERATURE H‚lio Oiticica, Centro de Arte H‚lio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 1997, p. 34-43. NOTES Searching for the possibility of creating new orders through art, Oiticica looks back at the work by Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich. From this research, Oiticica departs into his own quest for the achievement of a structural order that will affect both time and space while implying the active involvement of the body. In the 50s, his investigations were related to the search of the object-painting through the creation of rigorously constructed works. As his quest became increasingly involved with the body and tri-dimensional space, the pictoric surface was transformed into an intrusive construction that demanded the active participation of the spectator in the artistic experience. The present drawings are considered seminal in the artist's work since they were executed as a result of his direct involvement with the Neo-Concrete movement, preceding by a very short period of time the first bilaterais.