In 1954, he studied painting at the School of the MAM-RJ – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro [Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro]. In 1955, he came into contact with members of the Grupo Frente (1954) and, alongside Lygia Clark (1920-1988), Lygia Pape (1927-2004), and Ivan Serpa (1923-1973), joined it. In 1960, he participated in the 2nd Neoconcrete Art Exhibition and created the Núcleos and the first Penetráveis, labyrinths of colored canvases suspended from the ceiling or fixed to the floor. In 1963, he created the Bólides, modular structures filled with pigments and objects (bottles and other containers) made to be manipulated by the public.
In the mid-1960s, Oiticica established a relationship with the Estação Primeira de Mangueira samba school and with the favela where the school's court was located. In this context, he created the Parangolés, capes, flags, and banners made to be worn or exhibited in collective presentations that incorporated music, dance, and poetry. His work unfolded in the installations Manifestações Ambientais [Environmental Manifestations], which included Tropicália (MAM-RJ, Rio de Janeiro, 1967), Éden (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1969) and Ninhos (MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970).
In 1970, he received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and moved to New York, where he remained until 1978. He wrote the Newyorkaises and experimented with film and video, making the projects Agripina é Roma-Manhattan (unfinished, 1972) and Cosmococa (1973), non-narrative films that spoke out against the passivity of the public. He returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1978 and died prematurely in 1980 at the age of 42.
Oiticica participated in important national and international exhibitions, including the 4th, 5th, and 34th editions of the São Paulo Biennial (1957; 1959; 2021), documenta X, in Kassel, Germany (1997), and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). His recent solo exhibitions include The Body of Colour (Tate Modern, 2007), To Organize Delirium (The Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, 2017), and Dance in My Experience (MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, 2020). His work is part of international collections, such as the MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art, MACBA – Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Daros Zürich – Latinamerica Collection, and the Museums of Modern Art of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (MAM-SP; MAM-RJ).