Hélio Oiticica's work is marked by intense experimentation over three decades of production, accompanied by numerous texts and theoretical elaborations authored by him. The artist was part of the Grupo Frente and the Neoconcrete group, being one of the pillars of this Rio de Janeiro-based movement. 

One of his main contributions to the history of Brazilian and world art lies in the process of spatializing color: when his painting gradually begins to leap off the canvas and develop in real space, escaping the frame (both physical and metaphorical) and the two-dimensional nature. 

His work is also characterized by the incorporation of other sensory stimuli beyond the visual, such as touch, appealing to the audience's participation, turning them from spectators into activators, and in some cases, even part of the work. This occurs when Oiticica develops his Parangolés, a series of works to be worn and activated through dance – more specifically, samba. This experience is due to a significant turning point in the artist’s career, when he began collaborating with the samba school Estação Primeira de Mangueira and interacting with the community. 

It is at this moment that the critic Mário Pedrosa pioneers the term "postmodern art" to refer to Oiticica's work, whose vocation, in his words, is towards anti-art, towards impurity. Pedrosa wrote in 1966: "It was during the initiation into samba that the artist moved from the visual experience, in its purity, to an experience of touch, movement, and the sensory enjoyment of materials, in which the entire body, previously confined to the distant aristocracy of the visual, enters as the total source of sensibility."