Author Description

Hélio Oiticica (b. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1937-80), considered one of the most profound and adventurous artists of our times. The comprises a careful selection of part of Hélio Oiticica's letters that significantly expands the dimension of this artist's work. A legacy that already has objects, non-objects, poetry, plays, critical thinking, philosophy, theater, music, dance, performance, interventions, artistic and poetic practices, among others, and that through these letters is reaffirmed. Above all, through them, a new perspective can be glimpsed: that of the infinite dimension of his work. The book, meticulously compiled during more than four years of work by researcher Tânia Rivera, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in collaboration with César Oiticica Filho nephew of Hélio Oiticica, the project's initiator, offers a profound exploration of the history of art in Brazil spanning almost a decade. "In the selection of the letters from 1962 to 1970 that make up this book, we see the singular writing of Oiticica take shape, his unique style that mixes in horizontality the account of fortuitous events - such as the landing of Queen Elizabeth in Mauá square, which he attends by chance and under the effect of marijuana - to comments on her readings in philosophy, poetry and politics, in which Merleau-Ponty, Herbert Marcuse, Edmund Husserl, Malcolm X and William Burroughs stand out. We follow vivid reflections on poetic concepts such as Penetrável, Bólide, Parangolé, Suprasensorial, Tropicália and Crelazer, in variations that refuse the formulas ready to be redone, with incredible intensity, at every moment. We witnessed the enthusiastic invention of much lesser-known notions, such as Psychocard, Psychophotos, Subterrânia, Variedades, Contos and Autos, as well as dense thoughts about music and cinema that lead to the presence of a tape with songs by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil in the Eden environment (1969) and the project of "under-ground film