Secret Poetics – Hélio Oiticica

Softback

120 pages

Soberscove Press

ISBN: 9781940190327

The first English-language translation of Oiticica’s "secret" poetry, featuring facsimile renderings of the handwritten poems and accompanying notes by the artist. Hélio Oiticica (1937–80) is widely considered one of Brazil’s most significant artists, and his influence is felt across a range of disciplines including painting, film, installation and participatory art. He is well known as a key founder of the interdisciplinary movement known as Neoconcretismo, launched in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 with the collaboration of artists and writers including Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Ferreira Gullar. Between 1964 and 1966, moving out of his Neoconcretist period, Oiticica wrote a series of lyrical poems entitled "Poética Secreta" (Secret Poetics), and he reflected in a private notebook on their significance for his wider practice as an artist.

Edited and translated by Rebecca Kosick