Abstract Experiments: Latin American Art on Paper after 1950—Art Institute of Chicago

Hélio Oiticica. GFR 022, 1955. Collection of Donna and Howard Stone.
All images courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

The following is from the AIC gallery didactics:
“The Neoconcrete movement emerged in Rio de Janeiro as a reaction to the perceived rigidity of the Brazilian Concrete art movement as it was practiced in São Paulo. The Neoconcretists, among them Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Hélio Oiticica rejected the commodification of the art object and embraced a poetic, participatory and multi-sensory experience. In their two-dimensional work the artists of the Neoconcrete movement replaced the strict geometry of concrete art with softened more organic forms. Moving into the three-dimensional realm, they turned spectators into participants in order to challenge to traditional relationship of the viewer to the work of art.” 


Hélio Oiticica. Metaesquema, 1958–59. Collection of Diane and Bruce Halle. In 1959 the two-dimensional geometric forms of Oiticica’s early paintings on cardboard began to transition into his Bilateral and Spatial Reliefs, which were suspended from the ceiling.


Manuel Espinoza. Celestial Theme, from 21 Estampadores de Colombia, Mexico y Venuzuela, 1972. Gift of the Container Corporation of America. This piece exemplifies the genre of Venezuelan kineticism.