Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on the cusp of World War II, Hélio Oiticica began creating at a young age. An influential member of both Grupo Frente and following Neo-Concrete movement, and then later a groundbreaking performance artist, Oiticica was one of the most important artists to emerge from Brazil in the midcentury.
Led by Ivan Serpa and based in Rio de Janeiro, Grupo Frente consisted of “a loose association of artists [including Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark and Oiticica] who came together to exhibit, discuss, and share ideas” (Grupo Frente, by the Adolpho Leirner collects ion of Brazilian Constructive Art at the Museum of Replica Handbags s Houston, Google Arts & Culture). The short-lived yet prominent collects ive became known for its rejection of the prevailing figurative, nationalistic style throughout contemporary Brazilian art in favor of a new paradigm of geometric abstraction. Grupo Frente was also a central catalyst for the establishment of the equally influential Neo-Concrete movement created after its dispersal in 1956. The latter movement retained Grupo Frente's predilection for geometry, but sought to integrate the observer into the artwork in a humanistic, intuitive approach to artmaking — in contrast to the "cold," rational abstraction of the earlier group.
Metaesquema 58 reveals Oiticica’s desire to challenge the boundaries of plastic creative expression as well as its relationship to the human experience. Produced by Oiticica while he was living in Rio de Janeiro between 1957-58, each work in this pivotal series features an assortment of flatly rendered geometric shapes in primary colors, in compositions that challenge the dominance of the orthogonal grid. Carefully distilled and brimming with energy, these images challenge the solidity and stillness of De Stijl and other paragons of early twentieth-century abstraction, leaping forth from the picture plane with a joyful, rhythmic vibrance.
Major Works by Hélio Oiticica in Institutional collects ions
Like Piet Mondrian, Oiticica successfully constructs a full, balanced composition with symMetricas l geometric forms. Additionally, both artists relied on a single color technique to articulate distinct spatial relationships between different planes in the grid. As is the case in Mondrian’s Composition with Yellow, Metaesquema 58’s deployment of a single warm brownish-yellow rhombus stratifies the composition’s flat surface and enhances its sense of depth.
Oiticica crucially deviates from the precedent of abstract modernists. Unlike the structurally restrained, rigorously ordered grids of Mondrian, Metaesquema 58 is dynamic. The artist’s use of rotational symmetry and subsequent spatial relation between each geometric form injects the surface with instability. Aided by the single burst of color, the composition sways and induces a sort of visual vertigo. The viewer is confronted with a “queasy ... sensation of jostling forms" (Irene V. Small, Hélio Oiticica: Folding the Frame, Chicago and London 2016, p. 36).
In other words, Metaesquema 58 deconstructs the grids so carefully constructed by masters of geometric modernism. As the translation of Metaesquemas – (Meta-Schemes) – makes clear, Oiticica’s series represents his yearning to be freed of geometric abstraction’s formal constraints – and even the constraints of his media itself – while building on these past technical principles.
Oiticica’s series of gouache Metasquemas 1957-9 responded on their own highly original terms to the challenges laid down by…. Mondrian; these early works are poised between hard edge abstraction and sensuous colorism, between order and volatility, precision and chaos.
Metaesquema 58’s dynamism destabilizes the composition – and the viewer, making it a consummate example of Oiticia’s link to the Neo-Concrete movement outside of his performance and installation art. Like his later immersive and interactive installations, Metaesquema 58 invites viewers to actively engage with Oiticica’s artistic process and reveals the artist’s desire to engage, and possibly conjoin, the tenets of art and life.