“Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics” Book Launch
Join us for the launch of Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics, recently published by Soberscove Press and Winter Editions in November 2023. The first English-language translation of the “secret” poetry of Hélio Oiticica, the publication uncovers a crucial chapter in the development of one of Brazil’s most significant twentieth-century artists.
This event features a presentation and reading by the book's editor and translator, Rebecca Kosick, followed by a conversation between Kosick and pioneering Oiticica scholar Irene Small.
The launch is open to the public and will take place in person at ISLAA, located at 142 Franklin Street in New York City. Attendees are encouraged to register online in advance. The conversation will be held in English, and a recording will be broadcast live by Montez Press Radio.
Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics
Between 1964 and 1966, in the first years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, Oiticica wrote a series of lyrical poems, entitled Secret Poetics, and reflected in a private notebook on their significance for his artistic practice. Despite his global fame as a founder of the interdisciplinary movement known as neoconcretismo, his collaborations with major Brazilian artists and writers (Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Ferreira Gullar, etc.), and his influence across a range of disciplines (including painting, film, installation, and participatory art), Oiticica’s “secret” poems are almost unknown and have never been published as a collection. This edition, featuring the original texts in facsimile reproductions along with English translations and accompanying essays by translator Rebecca Kosick and critic Pedro Erber, uncovers the significance of poetry to Oiticica’s thinking on participation, sensation, and memory.
Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980) is among twentieth-century Brazil’s most significant artists, with a multifaceted practice that included painting, sculpture, installation, performance, filmmaking, and writing. Oiticica was a leading member of Grupo Frente (an association of concrete artists) and, in 1959, co-founded the neoconcreto movement with artists and poets including Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Ferreira Gullar. Oiticica was a 1970 Guggenheim Fellow, and today his work is held in collections across the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern.
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
Tue–Sat: 12–6 PM Sun–Mon: Closed
