The publication traces Andreas Valentin's lifelong relationship with Brazilian avant-garde artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980).
Spanning decades and continents, it began in 1959, when Valentin was six years old and began taking art lessons with Oiticica. It continued through exchanges of letters when, in the mid-1960s, Valentin moved to Thailand and Oiticica moved to the UK in 1968. As Irene V. Small writes in her preface to the book, their relationship was "reignited and transformed when they both resided in the United States in the 1970s: Valentin, now a university student studying in Pennsylvania, while Oiticica, ever-more transgressive, built a cosmos of experimental practice with a growing cast of characters in his loft in New York City".
In 1978, Oiticica returned to Rio, and their "camaraderie" continued. Andreas Valentin was one of two very close friends who had keys to his apartment when Hélio Oiticica suffered a fatal stroke at the age of forty-two.
Andreas Valentin (born 1952 in Rio de Janeiro) is a photographer, visual artist, researcher, and professor. He has worked intensively in documentary and artistic photography, as well as in experimental film and video. He has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Brazil and around the world. He researches the history of photography and has engaged in extensive curatorial work. He studied and collaborated with Brazilian avant-garde artist Hélio Oiticica. The films and photographs they created have been published in books and displayed at major institutions worldwide.
Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) was a Brazilian artist and theorist, sculptor, painter, performer, filmmaker and writer. Founder of the Tropicália movement in the late 1960s, he is known for his participation in the neo-concretism movement, for his innovative use of color, and for what he called "environmental art," which included the Parangolés and the Penetrables.
