Hélio Oiticica at Dia Art Foundation, New York, USA

14 May 2026

Now on long term view, Dia Art Foundation presents Hélio Oiticica at Dia Beacon in New York.

Hélio Oiticica was a groundbreaking visual artist and theorist whose diverse practice spanned sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and performance. His expansive body of work laid the foundations for participatory art, offering radical insights into abstraction through the lens of social, political, and economic conditions in Latin America and beyond. As a central figure in Brazil’s Neoconcrete movement and a co-founder of the Tropicália movement, Oiticica’s innovative approach emphasized the importance of spatial awareness and embodied interaction.

At the center of the exhibition at Dia Beacon, Grande Núcleo (Grand Nucleus) (1960–63) stands out as one of Oiticica’s most engaging environments. Breaking with the two-dimensional boundaries of earlier series like Metaesquemas or Monocromáticos of the 1950s, Grande Núcleo was created as a complex structure of rectangular panels, painted in a vibrant spectrum from bright yellow to deep orange, and arranged in a dynamic grid of varying angles and heights. Here, the viewer’s corporeal presence, movement, and perception of time and space become integral to the work, actively shaping the relational dynamics within its environment.

“Hélio Oiticica foregrounded many important aspects of contemporary art, including the subjective experience of the body within varying environments and the role of social context. This exhibition focuses on Oiticica’s formative years (1958–66), a period in which his artistic investigations evolved from the flat picture plane to volumetric works, culminating in spatial experiences contingent on the viewer’s movement. The show furthers Dia’s mission to offer publics expanded geographical perspectives on key figures whose practices from the 1960s and ’70s generate dynamic dialogues with our history,” said Humberto Moro, Dia’s deputy director of program.

Find out more via Dia Art Foundation.

Image: Installation views of Hélio Oiticica, 'Grande Núcleo (Grand Nucleus)', 1960-63, at Dia Art Foundation, New York © César and Claudio Oiticica, Projeto Hélio Oiticica. Photo: On White Wall