HOUSTON, TX.- Through its International Center for the Arts of the Americas , the Museum of Fine Arts , Houston , has undertaken a multi-year collaboration with the Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro , Brazil to document, conserve and exhibit the work of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980), one of the 20th century’s most innovative artists. The museum is committed to two exhibitions of his work as well as to the documentation and restoration of a large number of his works, and to the publication of a seven-volume catalogue raisonné of Oiticica’s work.

Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color is on view in Houston in the Upper Brown Pavilion of the Caroline Wiess Law Building , 1001 Bissonnet Street , until April 1, 2007 , before traveling to the Tate Modern in London , June 7–September 3, 2007.

“Our mission for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas is to chart the history of Latin American art and to develop an international resource on the works of Latin American artists in the 20th century,” comments MFAH director Peter C. Marzio. “Oiticica’s legacy and influence remains largely unknown, yet he was an artist with singular vision, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Europe’s and America ’s modern masters. By bringing these early works together, many of them on view for the first time, the museum is able to show a larger audience the work of an artist who anticipated so much of what we know in American and European modern art, and to broaden awareness of his work and of the artistic climate in Brazil in the twentieth century.”

The Body of Color will trace the conceptual and technical processes that led to Oiticica’s emancipation of color into space. The exhibition will display approximately 220 objects representative of the different series created by the artist between 1955 and 1969, shedding light on the various contexts and influences that nurtured their production, and demonstrating the rigor of his aesthetic inquiry. Additionally, in an attempt to stay true to the broad interdisciplinary scope of Oiticica’s production, the exhibition will also include documentary materials, films, and maquettes. Because the artist was a meticulous record keeper and would not sell his work, the PHO possesses an astonishing amount—about 95 percent—of Oiticica’s lifetime production, as well as an unprecedented wealth of supporting material.

Oiticica’s exploration of color began with the early paintings and gouaches that he did with the Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente (1955-56). This early series (never shown before) reveals a highly subjective approach to the concrete art tradition practiced by Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo artists. The iconoclastic approach of the Grupo Frente led to the initial deconstructions of color grids embodied in the Metaesquemas (1957-58) series. It also resulted in an extraordinary group of white-on-white paintings inspired by the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich that were never seen during the artists’ lifetime or afterward and only recently restored for this exhibition. In 1959, after joining the Neoconcrete Group that included Lygia Clark and the poet and theoretician Ferreira Gullar, Oiticica explored the retinal and physical experience of color in non-traditional paintings and objects that invited the participation of the viewer. Their work during this period resulted in the progressive deconstruction of the traditional components of painting—color and its support, the two-dimensional plane—and their reconfiguration in innovative proposals. Hence, in Oiticica’s Spatial Reliefs, Bilaterals (1959) and Nuclei series (1960-66), which consist of suspended double-sided painted-wood constructions, the spectator is invited to move in and around the panels to discover color as a physical environment. Shortly afterwards, Oiticica started to work with ephemeral materials, becoming progressively interested in incorporating the viewer into the work of art as a dynamic component. In this period he constructed Penetrables (1960-79), environmental pieces consisting of labyrinths in which the audience was invited to walk into and experience sensations through bodily contact with ropes, hanging fabrics, plants, sand, gravel, and everyday objects.

However, it was not until the Bólides (1963-69) and Parangolés (1964-79) that Oiticica’s exploration of color achieved a highly radical and original formulation that set him firmly apart from his predecessors and contemporaries. The Bólides consisted of glass containers and wood boxes filled with pigments, coal, shells, and earth. On one hand, these were meant to produce an “energetic” encounter between the body and the psyche of the viewer by means of direct visual and tactile stimuli; on the other hand, when exposed to light, they produced subtle chromatic effects that situate them in the category of manipulable light-boxes. With these objects, Oiticica began the gradual dematerialization of color into pure sensory stimuli that would reach a climax with the Parangolés (1964-79). The latter consisted of colored capes, banners, and cloth-objects to be displayed or worn as “habitable” paintings by the public. Worn by anonymous members of the audience who moved to the rhythm of samba, the Parangolés functioned to activate and enact the fleeting illusion of “color-in-motion.”

The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts , Houston in collaboration with Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro , Brazil. Major corporate sponsorship is provided by Petrobras. In Houston , additional generous funding is provided by: The Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Sotheby’s, Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., and Samuel F. Gorman.