B17 Glass Bólide 05 ‘Homage to Mondrian’
- Artist: Hélio Oiticica
- Date: 1965
- Medium: Glass, textile, water, pigment and cork
- Dimensions: 300 x 475 x 600 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the “B17 Glass Bólide 05 ‘Homage to Mondrian’” by Hélio Oiticica, made in 1965. It’s a glass bottle, corked and filled with a yellow‑tinted water that contains dissolved pigment. The bottle is covered with four pieces of treated fabric: a crumpled nylon sheet soaked in pale blue, two yellow‑and‑orange hessian strips, and a small red lace‑like mesh. A bit of natural fibre glued to the cork adds a dot of red. The fabrics sit like a haphazard, vertical‑horizontal grid that echoes Mondrian’s straight lines and primary colours.
Oiticica was fascinated by how colour behaves physically, so he soaked paint into fabrics and mixed it into the liquid, turning colour into part of the object itself. He named the series “Bólides” (fireballs) because the glass vessel, with its colour‑laden contents, feels like a luminous meteor. The subtitle pays direct tribute to the Dutch abstract artist, pointing to the shared use of basic colours and geometric structure.
See it in person
B17 Glass Bólide 05 ‘Homage to Mondrian’ is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
