The Noigandres Poets and
Concrete Art
In 2006 we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of two interconnected
events. The first was the trans-Atlantic baptism of a new kind of
poetry produced in Brazil by the “Noigandres” group of poets and in
Europe, as the Brazilians had recently found out, by Eugen Gomringer
and others, and which Gomringer in 1956 agreed to label “poesia
concreta / konkrete poesie / concrete poetry,” a label that
Augusto de Campos had first proposed for their own production a year
before. The second event was the opening of the “I Exposição
Nacional de Arte Concreta” in the Museu de Arte Moderna of
The first event established the
international presence of the Brazilians in a movement that was found
rather than founded as its members gradually discovered each other, and
that culminated (and ended) in the publication of several international
anthologies in the late sixties and in a number of exhibitions,
including a month-long “expose: concrete poetry” at Indiana University
in 1970.(1) The second event had no
international repercussions but turned out to be of considerable
significance for the Brazilian cultural scene of the day. It
established the label “Concrete Art,” and with it “Concrete Poetry,” in
the public mind. It was apparently the first exhibition in
While the Frente artists from
Fig. 1: Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973), Movimento
(Movement), 1951.
Tempera on canvas, 90.2 x 95 cm.
Contemporânea, Universidade de
São Paulo (USP).(8)
Luiz Sacilotto’s Concreção (1952;
fig. 2).
Fig. 2: Luiz Sacilotto (1924-2003), Concreção
(Concretion), 1952.
Oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm.
and Desenvolvimento de um quadrado and
Movimento contra movimento by Geraldo de Barros (both of 1952;
fig. 3).
Fig.3: Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998)
Left: Desenvolvimento de um quadrado
[Função diagonal] (Development of a Square [Diagonal Function]),
1952. Industrial lacquer on cardboard, 60 x 60 x 0.3 cm. Coll. Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros.(9)
Right: Movimento contra movimento (Movement
against Movement), 1952. Enamel on kelmite, 60 x 60 cm.
The reference to time or movement in the
titles that is characteristic of Ruptura work, as well as the use of
industrial media such as enamel or lacquer and of industrial board
(kelmite or eucatex) for the support, are also found in Objeto
rítmico No. 2 (1953; fig. 4) by Mauricio Nogueira Lima, who joined
Ruptura in 1953.
Fig. 4: Maurício Nogueira
“Pintura” on eucatex, 40 x 40 cm.
The apparent movement evoked by the design
is particularly intriguing in Círculos com movimento alternado
(1953; fig. 5) by Hermelindo Fiaminghi, who joined in 1955. The design
consists of an off-white vertical field traversed by coupled horizontal
bands in red and grey arranged in an alternating sequence which
reverses over the horizontal axis; its most effective feature is the
suggestion of a series of half-circles whose placement prevents the
upper halves from meeting the lower halves in a circle – which induces
the viewer to mentally moving them constantly closer or pushing them
apart in order to achieve the perfect circular form. The temporal
dimension is clearly perceived as a mental function induced by the
spatial design.(10)
Fig. 5: Hermelindo Fiaminghi
(1920-2004), Círculos com movimento alternado
(Circles with
Alternating Movement), 1956. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 35 cm. (11)
For the National Exhibition of 1956/57, an
issue of the magazine AD: Arquitetura e Decoração (No. 20, Dec.
1956) served as the catalogue and carried programmatic statements as
well as reproductions of artwork and poems. The cover (fig. 6) was
based on a painting by Fiaminghi that in 1977 was owned by the poet
Ronaldo Azeredo (fig. 7).(12)
Fig. 6: Cover, ad: arquitetura e
decoração (
Fig. 7: Fiaminghi, Triângulos com
movimento em diagonal (Triangles with Diagonal
Movement), 1956. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 60 cm.
Cordeiro opened his statement in the
catalogue by asserting: “Sensibility and the object encounter, at the
hands of the avant-garde, a new correlation.” He continued: “Art
represents the qualitative moments of sensibility raised to thought, a
“thought in images”. [ . . .] The universality of art is the
universality of the object. [ . . .] Art is different from pure thought
because it is material, and from ordinary things because it is thought.
[. . .] Art is not expression but product. [. . .] Spatial
two-dimensional painting reached its peak with Malevich and Mondrian.
Now there appears a new dimension: time. Time as
movement. Representation transcends the plane, but it is not
perspective, it is movement. (“O objeto”)
Besides later work by the Ruptura artists
already sampled, now less tentative and more sophisticated, the
“National Exhibition” included work by a founding member, Lothar
Charoux (fig. 8),
Fig. 8: Lothar Charoux (1912-1987),
Desenho (Design), 1956. Ink on paper,
49.3 x 49.2 cm.
by Judith Lauand, who had joined the group
later (fig. 9),
Fig. 9: Judith Lauand (b. 1922), Variação
em curvas (Variation in
Curves), 1956. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 60 cm.
and by Alexandre Wollner, a close associate
but never a Ruptura member (fig. 10).
Fig. 10: Alexandre Wollner (b. 1928), Composição
em triângulos (Composition in Triangles),
1953. Enamel on duratex, 61 x 61 cm.
[Remade in 1977, after original in coll. Max Bill.]
All three are based on the square, the
preferred shape for much of the work by the Ruptura artists at the time
(cf. figs. 3, 4, 7, 12, 14, 26); all three confirm the tendency of
these Concrete artists’ designs to use “variation” and “development” of
lines and shapes by systematically altering their size and thus achieve
implications of a temporal dimension and the illusion of moving into
the depth of the field.
Alfredo Volpi, thirty years older than most
of the others and now counted among the very great in Brazilian art,
was for a number of years drawn onto the Concrete path. In his Xadres
branco e vermelho (fig. 11) he introduced into a static, flat,
decorative red-and white checkerboard pattern a dynamic ambiguity by
splitting diagonally descending squares diagonally into halves of
opposing colors, which inverts the pattern below the diagonal and
altogether confuses one’s optical orientation – which is only one of
the consequences of this simple intervention, more difficult to
verbalize than to grasp visually.
Fig. 11: Alfredo Volpi (1896-1988), Xadres
branco e vermelho (White and Red Checkerboard),
1956. Tempera[?]
on canvas, 53 x 100 cm.
A black-and white reproduction of Volpi’s
painting was reproduced in the ad catalogue, and so was
Mauricio Nogueira Lima’s Triângulo espiral (fig. 12), a black
square in which a set of interlocking triangles follows a systematic
pattern of development that imposes a rotation either inward to the
left, with regular diminutions, or outward to the right, with the
triangles increasing, so that the spiral movement may suggest either an
implosion or an explosion.
Fig. 12: Mauricio Nogueira
Paint on eucatex, 60 x 60cm.
A striking example of the use of industrial
material with a suggestion of manufacturing processes was Sacilotto’s Concreção
5624 (fig. 13);(13) its uneven surface
resulting from pasting on identical small aluminum squares in a
rigorous pattern introduced into the monochrome work a play of light
and shadows that changed with the position of the observer.
Fig. 13: Luiz Sacilotto, Concreção
5624, 1956. Oil on aluminum,
36.5 x 60 x 0.4 cm.
Coll. Renata Feffer.
In keeping with the slogan “the work of art
does not contain an idea, it is itself an idea,”(14)
Cordeiro entitled many of his paintings of that time “Visible Idea”;
figure 14 shows one version of a series developing this particular
idea, or theme.(15)
Fig. 14: Paint and plaster on plywood
The impersonality of their work of the
1950s made it at times difficult to recognize authorship, but – as
these examples will have demonstrated – differences existed and would
eventually become more pronounced; however, for a number of years the
members of the Ruptura group adhered quite faithfully to their program
The materials of their paintings (straight or curved lines, geometric
shapes, a few carefully balanced colors used for structural effect)
were reduced to a minimum; all signs of individual production, such as
brushstrokes, were eliminated. The only self-expression they permitted
their work to show was the expression of their particular way of visual
thinking and of the ways in which they conceived and executed “visual
ideas.” Every work followed a clear plan which could be formulated as
verbal instructions to be executed by someone else; and a realization
of the rules governing each “visible idea” was a necessary part of the
viewer’s experience and understanding. In the case of Cordeiro’s
painting shown in figure 14 we see two sets of angled straight lines,
one in red, the other in black, placed so asymmetrically that they
hardly invade the left half of the white square, but with the implied
movement producing a sense of visual balance. The black lines function
as it were in counterpoint to the mechanically regular progression of
the identical angular lines in red, except for the reverse angle in the
final line that braces the movement; yet the effect on the perception
and visual imagination is not mechanical at all. Spatial
relationships become ambivalent, and a major characteristic of this
minimalist work is its rhythmic dynamism.
The work of these artists, much of which
was undertaken as a kind of “pesquisa” (research), an exploration of
the possibilities of the medium, created indeed a sense of movement,
differently induced in each case and mentally executed by the viewer.
“The painters, designers and sculptors from São Paulo not only believe
in their theories but also follow them, at their own risk”, wrote the
influential critic Mário Pedrosa in response to the exhibition of
1956/57, contrasting them with the artists from Rio, whom he considered
“almost romantics” by comparison. (16) Indeed,
the poet and critic Ferreira Gullar, who was to become their major
spokesman, confirmed:
The Grupo Frente did not have at least two
of the characteristics that are common to avant-garde
movements: the defense of a single stylistic orientation and a
theoretical underpinning. [. . .] Nevertheless, it played a role in the
renovation of Brazilian art [. . .] (“O Grupo Frente” 143)
A number of the artists from
No matter what the merits of this
criticism, both their work and their theoretical statements
confirm the affinities between the Noigandres poets and the Ruptura
artists. Cordeiro met Décio, Haroldo and Augusto in November 1952,
when they had just published the first issue of Noigandres with
their recent poems and the Ruptura artists were about to open their
exhibition. I do not know much about the intensity of the contacts
in the years before the National Exhibition, but some of the Ruptura
members have been called “interlocutores constantes” with the
poets. In 1953 Décio and Cordeiro traveled together to
All of these poems are inscribed in
invisible squares. All contain at least two colors, with the sixth, “dias dias dias,” displaying all of the primary
and secondary colors as well as lower-case and capital letters.
Inspired by the composer Anton von Webern’s theory and practice of Klangfarbenmelodie,(18) published.(19) The most frequently discussed poem is
“lygia,” reproduced and analyzed (again) in Marjorie Perloff’s essay; I
have shown elsewhere, following Augusto’s own lead, that the poem is in
fact (among other things) a transposition of the opening measures of
Webern’s Quartet for Violin, Clarinet, Tenor saxophone and Piano, op.
22 (Clüver, “Klangfarbenmelodie”).
In the newspaper articles Augusto and
Haroldo began to publish in 1955 there was apparently no reference to
Brazilian Concrete art. When the “plano-piloto da poesia concreta”
(Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry), the condensed summary of the
theoretical statements composed by the two and Décio over the past four
years and published in 1958 in Noigandres 4, defines Concrete
poetry as “tension of word-things in space-time” and lists parallels in
music and the visual arts, it refers to “mondrian and the boogie-woogie
series; max bill; albers and the ambivalence of perception; concrete
art in general.” It is difficult and also rather pointless to speculate
on the effect the personal contacts may have had on the thoughts and
the work of poets or painters during the years leading up to the
National Exhibition.
But the affinities are obvious. In
hindsight, considering them from the “orthodox” (or “heroic”) phase
that their work had reached with the poems published in Noigandres
4, Augusto’s Poetamenos poems still show a number of
characteristics that were later eliminated (which, for some readers,
may make them more interesting and appealing). There is still a
lyrical “I” present – in fact, in terms of referential content they are
a kind of Erlebnislyrik. The fifth poem, “eis os amantes,”
using a more reduced verbal material and approaching the isomorphism so
strongly emphasized in the “Pilot Plan”, indicates most clearly the
path future developments will follow.
Fig. 15a: Augusto de Campos (b. 1931), “eis
os amantes” (1953/55),
from Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, recto
of inside cover page.
Fig. 15b: Augusto de Campos, “here are the
lovers,” trans. A. de Campos, Marcus Guimarães
and Mary Ellen Solt , from Solt, ed., Concrete
Poetry, verso of inside cover page.
Originally published in the complementary
colors blue and orange,(20) it was placed in
white and orange within a blue square for its publication in Mary Ellen
Solt’s Concrete poetry anthology (fig. 15a), with the
English translation appearing in blue and white in an orange square
(fig. 15b).(21) The semantic representation of
the sexual union of two lovers, culminating in the long portmanteau
word in the center and the final verbal fusion of one in the other
continuing the “infant” motif, is visually shown by the placement,
approximation, intertwining and crossing of the two colors. Noigandres
3 was published on the occasion of the 1956 exhibit, with poems by
Décio Pignatari, Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, and Ronaldon Azeredo.
Pignatari’s “um movimento” was also included in the ad
catalogue as a typewritten text. I reproduce it below with an attempt
at a translation that makes compromises in order to somehow preserve
its most salient features. It is (still) a syntactically coherent
statement complete with a verb (a participle, “compondo”) and separated
by an empty line into two stanzas. But the most striking feature
is the column of m’s in the center (making it into a kind of Mittelachsengedicht),
which emphasizes its spatial properties and invites the exploration of
other vertical relations and internal visual structures. The entire
shape suggests an iconic relation to its semantic content, a
(metaphoric?) landscape or cloudscape, which moves from “a movement” to
“a moment”, with “horizonte” representing the most prominent horizontal
feature. There is still an implied observer and therefore the expressed
presence of a consciousness.
Fig. 16: Décio Pignatari (b. 1927), “um movimento,” from Noigandres 3, 1956; English version: Claus Clüver.
Composed in the same year but not included
in Noigandres 3, Augusto’s “terremoto” (earthquake) (22) (fig. 17) has a purely spatial syntax,
although conceptually, in its lexical references, it develops a
temporal theme of cosmic proportions. Its “stanzas” descend diagonally
from top to bottom, although each of these interlocking open squares is
internally developed both horizontally and vertically (Augusto has
referred to it as a Concrete crossword-puzzle). There is a sense
of expansion and contraction; the last stanza is a dense ball dominated
by o’s and t’s (which in the Futura
typeface look like crosses). This ball refers us both visually and
conceptually back to the o’s of the egg (“ovo”) and the ball of yarn
(“novelo”) of the opening and thus suggests a circularity that is found
in a number of poems of the later phase, formally expressing the
space-time dimension emphasized in the “Pilot Plan,” which is there
likened to the same phenomenon represented “in concrete art in general.”
Fig. 17: Augusto de Campos,
“terremoto” (1956), version published
in Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, np.
The poem was originally published in black
on a white page; the version shown here, which shows the letters in
white inscribed in a dark blue square, visually evokes a stellar
constellation, in keeping with part of the dominant imagery. This
iconic emphasis may subdue other implications and associations evoked
by the text; but Augusto has agreed that a white-on-black reproduction
may be appropriate (just as two of Haroldo’s contributions to Noigandres
3 offered a white text against a black ground).
In “arte concreta: objeto e objetivo,” the
programmatic opening statement of the catalogue, Décio Pignatari
emphasized that:
Verse having been abolished, Concrete poetry confronts many problems of space and time (movement) that both the visual arts and architecture have in common, not to speak of the most advanced (electronic) music. Moreover, the ideogram, for example, can perfectly well function on a wall, internal or external. (ad, no. 20, np.)
Obviously, the experience of showing their
work side by side with paintings and sculptures determined the poets’
decision to publish Noigandres 4 (1958) as a portfolio edition
with twelve poster poems, ready to be displayed. It had a cover by
Fiaminghi (fig. 18). With these poems, the production of the four had reached the most
characteristic form of the Concrete “ideogram,” as they called
Fig. 18: Cover of Noigandres 4,
1958; design: Hermelindo Fiaminghi.
their
texts as disciples of Ezra Pound. To a considerable degree, its
characteristics can be described by the same terms that I used to
indicate basic aspects of the paintings of the Ruptura members – which
is obviously the reason why they decided to exhibit their work
together, under the “Concrete” label. Reducing their verbal
material to a minimum, the poets were engaged in exploring its inherent
possibilities by structurally exhibiting the interplay of its visual,
aural, and semantic properties. Because of the importance they
continued to attach to semantics, they never worked with less than a
word, although the word could be subjected to processes of
fragmentation and permutation. The structure achieved by arranging the
verbal elements in the space of the page according to a text-specific
strategy can be considered as analogous to Cordeiro’s “visible idea.”
No structural procedure is ever repeated; while construction is
rule-bound, it is always tied to the semantics of the material in order
to achieve what the poets would call an “isomorphism,” an iconic
relationship between the verbal sign and its
signified (see Clüver, “Iconicidade”). Arranged according to a spatial
syntax, these seemingly simple texts would frequently allow for
multidirectional readings and return the reader to the
beginning. With the abolition of traditional linear progression
the poems would establish spatio-temporal relations that linked them to
the Ruptura paintings also in this respect. Eliminating any notion of a
“persona” or self-expressive lyrical “I”, the Concrete ideogram was
designed to be an “objeto útil”, a useful textual object to be
contemplated and explored, “open” (23) enough
to allow readers to “use” it according to their own ingenuity, but with
the expectation that they would respect the rules of the game inherent
in the structure. In an interview about the National Exhibition of
1956, Augusto has quite recently explained the polemical use of such
phrases as “useful object”:
It is obvious that certain characteristics of the new poetry were
carried by us to the limit, in the case of
terms and themes such as that of the “mathematics of composition” and
of “poem: useful object.” But I think that this radical attitude was
necessary in view of the self-complacency and sentimentalism dominant
in our midst. I saw in the “sensible rationalism” on which we
insisted the fundamental objective of poetry itself: to achieve a
production where not a word, not a letter could be changed,
where no part of the text could be moved without having the
poem collapse – which is, after all, the goal of every poet. (24)
I have used Haroldo de Campos’s poem
“nascemorre” (fig. 19) on an earlier occasion (25)
to show how a change of the minutest detail can destroy a major
structural effect: the first triangle formed by a regular (if you like
mathematical) development of the minimal verbal material (“se nasce morre”, if he/she/it is born
he/she/it dies) re-constructs itself by seemingly turning over an
invisible horizontal
Fig. 19: Haroldo de Campos
(1929–2003), “nascemorre,” Noigandres 4, 1958.
and a structurally designated vertical axis formed
by carefully aligned “re”s; a shift of the second triangle by one slot
to the left (as it has happened in the fine anthology organized by Mary
Ellen Solt) not only removes that axis but violates the structural
feature of vertically aligning all e’s of the text except for those of
the initial and final “se.” Altogether the poem exhausts all the
possibilities inherent in its semantic properties as well as of the
visual arrangement of its triangles. The final syllable (an echo
of “nasce”) returns us to the beginning in an endless progression of
dying and becoming.
In visual terms, the poem’s structure is
quite similar to Sacilotto’s Concreção 6048 of 1960, which also exhausts all the possibilities of
combining the black and white triangles and of placing the pairs that
are inherent in the design. Such similarities could be found in
structural comparisons of several poems with works by Ruptura artists. But the triangles and the placement of the pairs in Sacilotto’s painting
Fig. 20: Luiz Sacilotto, Concreção
6048, 1960. Oil on canvas,
60 x 120 cm.
obviously have a different motivation and function
than those in Haroldo’s poem, where each triangle manifestly performs
the act of “becoming” signaled by the verbal semantics and the “death”
of the first triangle leads to its “rebirth” in the second and the
inversion of the second also inverts the meaning of the verbs:
“desnasce” equals “morre.” On the other hand, as I hope to have shown,
the similarities between the work of both
groups in their orthodox Concrete phase reach significantly deeper.
The two latest members to join the
Noigandres group tended to work with the least amount of verbal
material. In “ruasol” (fig. 21) by Ronaldo Azeredo, the word “sol”
(sun) seems to move through the visual field formed by repetitions of
“rua” (street), only to return as a trace (an s) in the last line, where the s simultaneously
turns “rua” into a plural – only “ruas” is left when “sol” is gone. But our
Fig. 21: Ronaldo Azeredo (1937–2006),
“ruasol,”, Noigandres 4, 1958.
reading of this text will not stop with recognizing its
representational and iconic qualities; of greater interest is the
exploration of the verbal material and its signifying properties on
which the poem’s isomorphism is based – and of the kind of isomorphism
embodied in this text. (26)
The most rewarding way to read the poems
under consideration here is to approach them as metapoems – which in
this case includes the observation that “ruasol” is intranslatable,
because only Portuguese uses three letters to form each of the two
nouns signifying “street” and “sun.” An effort to understand how the
text functions is very similar to the effort of understanding a
Concrete painting or sculpture.
A poem that seems to “say” even less is
José Lino Grünewald’s “vai e vem” of 1959 (fig. 22). Here are some
notes by the filmmaker Stefan Ferreira Clüver, who in 1980 based an
18-minute film on this poem:
Two simple, formal transformations of a commonplace generate some very
complex possibilities for meaning
making. First, by violating the syntactic closure of the phrase
“vai e vem” with a repetition of the “e” at its end, a regular verbal
pattern is created that can go on indefinitely: ABA becomes
ABAB. Second, by giving this syntactic alteration a graphic
statement that connects beginning and end, the way in which the now
endlessly repeating phrase signifies is radically altered: it becomes
an ideogram. This ideogram, however, is quite different from those
in current writing systems that have become as conventional as
letter-based ones. The poem generates its own rules for making
meaning because, as an ideogram, it can only be understood as a graphic
violation of the linear, cumulative signifying conventions of language.
The poem’s arrangement on the page creates
a tension between a syntactic dynamism and graphic stasis. The
verbs “vai” and “vem,” normally words of action, become the visual
resting points of the graphic, while the conjunction “e” is the visual
motor. “Vai” and “vem” become thing words,
“e” becomes the movement word. (27)
Fig. 22: José Lino Grünewald
(1931–2000), “vai e vem” (1959), Anthologia Noigandres 5, p.
181.
In 1962 the five “Noigandres” poets (now
also including Grünewald) collected their published poems and quite a
few unpublished ones in antologia noigandres 5: do verso à poesia
concreta, with a cover (fig. 23) based on a painting by Volpi owned
by Pignatari (fig. 24). The anthology concluded the “heroic” phase of orthodox Concrete poetry produced by the Noigandres poets, at about the same
Fig.
23: Cover, antologia noigandres 5, 1962. 
Fig.
24: Alfredo Volpi, 1960, Coll. D. Pignatari.
time that the Ruptura artists began to strike out in individually more
distinct and separate ways, as did the poets. The contacts among
artists and poets continued. When I began my research in
Fig.
25: Mauricio Nogueira 
Fig. 26: Hermelindo Fiaminghi, 1956., Coll. D. Pignatari.
In Ronaldo Azeredo’s home I found these two
small paintings by Volpi and one by Sacilotto,
Fig.
27: Alfredo Volpi, two paintings, Coll. Ronaldo Azeredo... 
Fig.
28: Luiz Sacilotto, 1958, Coll. Ronaldo Azeredo.
as well as this work by Nogueira Lima
(besides the Fiaminghi painting shown in fig. 7):
Fig. 29: Mauricio Nogueira
Lima, 1960. Coll. Ronaldo
Azeredo.
Augusto owned a painting by Sacilotto that
I did not photograph; Haroldo’s living-room wall was full of paintings,
but there my son filmed while I was taping my interviews, and so I have
no slides.
I have limited my remarks to the decade
surrounding the National Exhibition and to the relations of the
Noigandres poets to Concrete art produced in
On the other hand, the sculptors from Rio
participating in the National Exhibition, Franz Weissmann, a Frente
member, and Amilcar de Castro, long associated with the group, continued throughout their career to
develop a line of work that retained close affinities to the Concrete
aesthetic; some of their later work is found in public places also in
Fig. 30: Franz Weissmann (1911–2005), Coluna
(Column), 1958. Painted iron, 280 x 110 x 75 cm.
São Paulo: Museu de Arte
Contemporânea, USP. Photo:
Claus Clüver, 1977.
squares
rather than on their sides, the new column was lighter and less
austere. The basic idea on which the column is built is also found
in another sculpture displayed in the 1977 exhibit, Três pontos (fig.
31). The artist told me in an interview in 1981 that he had hoped to
see it placed, in a larger scale, in the center of Brasília, to
symbolize the interplay and intricate balance among the three branches
of government.
Fig. 31: Franz Weissmann, Três
pontos (Three Points), 1958. Painted iron,
120 x 160 x 160 cm. Photo: Claus Clüver,
1977.
The sculpture that stood at the entrance of
the exhibit in Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art, Weissmann’s Círculo
inscrito num quadrado (fig. 32), shows one of the simplest forms
of the idea of creating interlocking squares out of flat sheets of
metal and “inscribing” in them circles by cutting them out; here, the
squares rest on their sides.
Fig. 32: Installation shot, “Projeto
Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1950–1962)”,
Museu de Arte Moderna, 1977, with Franz
Weissmann, Círculo inscrito num quadrado
(Circle Inscribed in a Square), 1958. Painted iron, 100 x 100 x 100 cm. Photo by Claus Clüver.
Amilcar de Castro’s work is characterized
by a seemingly intuitive approach and the great simplicity by which he
creates spatial configurations by cutting and bending “flat” circular
(fig. 33) or square (fig. 34) steel plates. I first saw a display of
some of his sculptures in 1976 in
Fig. 33: Amilcar de Castro
(1920–2002), steel sculpture displayed in front of the
Palácio das Artes in
Fig. 34: Amilcar de Castro, steel
sculptures displayed in the courtyard of the
Palácio das Artes in
.
The work of both sculptors clearly shares
the Concrete aesthetic exemplified by the paintings, sculptures, and
poems shown in the National Exhibition of 1956/57. It was not even then
a unified aesthetic, and the rupture
between Cariocas and Paulistas that was to occur soon after and to turn
into a split between Concrete and Neoconcrete art (and poetry) brought
into greater relief what an attentive observer like Mário Pedrosa noted
right away. But much of the public reaction involved an attempt to come
to terms with the radical break with tradition perceived in all of the
work, and most specifically in the poetry, because constructivist
visual art produced in
This essay has focused on the
interrelations between the work of the Ruptura artists and of the
Noigandres poets, and on the interactions among its members. As a
consequence of the juxtaposition and of the exploration of analogies
and similarities, access to these works may have become easier; even
nowadays, “reading” these texts – paintings, sculptures, and poems – is
still a considerable challenge for many.
And the way we read them has changed in the
course of fifty years. We are looking back at them with a knowledge of what has been produced since –both
by the artists and poets themselves and by the culture that shaped them
and that they have shaped in turn. The critical discourse has changed:
not only have post-modern notions about the nature and function of art
affected the way we approach these visual and verbal texts, but we have
witnessed a lively debate about the construction of avant-gardes and
neo-avant-gardes based on a well-mapped landscape of the earlier part
of the century that may be at odds with the information that was
available to the young Brazilians at mid-century.
What is also beginning to change, to some
extent under the impact of the new media and of the intermedial
genres of textmaking they are generating, is the habit of looking at
such events as the National Exhibition of 1956/57 through the limiting
lenses of the traditional disciplines. The
developing field of Studies of Intermediality will provide a more
appropriate perspective and better tools to look at such intermedial
phenomenon as Concrete poetry. Even now, the semicentennial
celebrations have by and large looked at it as a literary event. The
insistence of the Noigandres poets on listing in the “Pilot Plan”
not only Mallarmé, Pound, Joyce, Cummings, and Apollinaire as well
as the Brazilian poets Oswald de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto
as “precursors”, but pointing to aspects of the work of Eisenstein and
Webern as well as of Mondrian, Max Bill, Josef Albers and “Concrete art
in general” as providing signposts for the new poetry (and art) to be
“invented” has had little impact on the critical discussion. Nor have
the references to the other arts in the poems themselves received much
attention. (29) For
the poets, their participation in the exhibition was a defining moment.
They saw their work as constituting part of the new avant-garde that
was to shape their country’s cultural production – and possibly turn it
from the post-colonial “anthropophagic” consumer of foreign models into
a supplier itself of “models for export.”(30)
To some degree, the poets have succeeded;
they occupy an often privileged position in relevant international
anthologies and exhbition catalogues, (31)
although many of their manifestos and theoretical statements collected
in their Teoria have for the most part remained untranslated.
The Ruptura artists have remained almost entirely unknown abroad, for
reasons that have little to do with their work and everything with the
international art scene. But their impact within the country, along
with that of the Neoconcretos, can be assessed by the number of
memorial exhibitions I listed earlier, besides a growing number
of studies devoted to Brazil’s “Constructivist Project” in general
(32) or monographs on individual artists.(33) The publications accompanying and
documenting the exhibitions (34) included
material about Concrete (and Neoconcrete) poetry; in the monographs the
connection between Concrete art and poetry is not a topic. Art critics
and historians have disregarded the intermedial and intersemiotic
dimensions of the Brazilian avant-garde of the fifties just as much as
their literary counterparts. This essay provides no more than a modest
orientation.
Appendix
Visual Artists
Notes (1). The major anthologies are
listed in the Bibliography of Clüver, “Concrete Poetry: Critical
Perspectives.” The month-long international exhibition at (5). See Augusto de Campos, Interview, 2006. The
exhibition “concreta ’56: a raiz da forma” was held in the Museu de
Arte Moderna of (6). See the “Appendix” for a list of participants. References AD: Arquitetura e
Decoração ( Aldana, Erin. “Waldemar
Cordeiro, Idéia visível [Visible Idea], 1956.” In
Pérez-Barreiro, ed. The
Geometry of Hope, 148–50. Amaral, Aracy, ed. Projeto
Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1950–1962).
Exhibition
catalogue. Rio de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Moderna; São
Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 1977. Amaral, Aracy, ed. Arte
Construtiva no Brasil: Coleção
Adolfo Leirner. Portuguese and English. São Paulo: DBA
Artes Gráficas, 1998. Arte Concreta Paulista. 5 vols. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002. See: (1) João Bandeira; (2) Rejane Cintrão; (3) Lenora de Barros and Joo Bandeira; (4)
Helouise Costa; (5) Regina Teixeira de Barros. João Bandeira, org. Arte Concreta Paulista:
Documentos. Exhibition catalogue, Centro Universitário Maria
Antônia da Universidade de São Paulo. So Paulo: Cosac
& Naify; Centro Universitário Maria Antonia da USP, 2002. Barros, Lenora de, and João Bandeira, curators. Grupo Noigandres. Exhibition
catalogue, Centro Universitário Maria Antônia da Universidade de São
Paulo. Barros, Regina Teixeira de, ed. Antonio Maluf.Texts:
Regina Teixeira de Barros and Taisa Helena P. Linhares. Exhibition
catalogue, Centro Universitário Maria Antônia da Universidade de São
Paulo. Belluzo, Ana Maria. Waldemar Cordeiro: Uma aventura da
razão. São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporâneo de São Paulo, 1986.[P-B 334] Blistne, Bernard, and Véronique Legrand, orgs. Poésure et Peintrie: «d'un art,
l'autre». Exhibition catalogue, Centre de la
Vieille Charité, Marseille, 12 February – 23 May 1993. Marseille:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Musées de Marseille, 1993 [1998?]. Brito, Ronaldo. Amilcar
de Castro. Fotos Rômulo Fialdini et al. Cabral, Isabella, and M. A. Amaral
Rezende. Hermelindo Fiaminghi.
Artistas Brasileiros, 11. Campos, Augusto de.
http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/poemas.htm Campos, Augusto de, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos,
“plano-piloto para poesia concreta.” Noigandres 4 (1958). Rpt. in English:
“plano-piloto para poesia concreta / pilot plan for concrete poetry.” Portuguese and English, tr. by the authors. In
Solt, ed. Concrete Poetry: A World View.70–72. “pilot plan for concrete poetry.” Tr. Jon M. Tolman. In Richard Kostelanetz, ed. The Avant-Garde
Tradition in Literature. Campos, Haroldo de. “A Obra de Arte Aberta” (orig. 1955). Rpt. in Cintro, Rejane, curator. Grupo
Ruptura: Revisitando a Exposiço Inaugural. Texts by Rejane Cintrão and Ana Paula Nascimento. Exhibition catalogue, Centro Universitário Maria Antônia da
Universidade de São Paulo. Clüver, Claus. “Augusto de Campos’s ‘terremoto’: Cosmogony as
Ideogram.” Contemporary Poetry 3.1 (1978): 38-55. Clüver, Claus. “Brazilian Concrete: Painting, Poetry, Time,
and Space.” In Proceedings of the IXth
Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association.
Vol. 3: Literature and the Other Arts. Ed.
Zoran Konstantinović, Ulrich Weisstein, and Steven Paul Scher. Clüver, Claus. “Concrete Poetry: Critical Perspectives from
the 90s.” In K. David Jackson, Eric Vos, and Johanna Drucker, eds..Experimental – Visual – Concrete: Avant-Garde Poetry
Since the 1960s. AvantGarde
Critical Studies, 10. Clüver, Claus. “Iconicidade e
isomorfismo em poemas concretos brasileiros.” Trans. André Melo Mendes. Dossiã: 50 anos da poesia Concreta.
Ed. Myriam Corra de Araújo Ávila et al. O eixo e a roda (FALE, Universidade
Federal de Minas Gerais), no. 13 (July–Dec. 2006): 19–38. Clüver, Claus. “Klangfarbenmelodie in Polychromatic
Poems: A. von Webern and A. de Campos.” Comparative Literature
Studies 18 (1981): 386-98. Clüver, Claus. “On Intersemiotic
Transposition.” In Art and Literature I,
ed. Wendy Steiner. Topical issue. Poetics
Today 10.1 (1989): 55–90. Clüver, Claus.“The ‘Ruptura’
Proclaimed by Clüver, Stefan Ferreira. “Viewing Notes
by the Filmmaker” on vai e vem, a film from the poem of José
Lino Grünewald, 1980/1998. 1998, unpublished. Cordeiro, Waldemar. “O objeto.” AD: Arquitetura e
Decoração ( Gullar, Ferreira. “O Grupo
Frente e a Reação Neoconcreta / Frente Group and the
Neo-Concrete Reaction.” In Amaral, ed., Arte
Construtiva no Brasil, 143–81. Gullar, Ferreira. “Manifesto Neoconcreto,” Jornal do Brasil ( Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo. Catálogo Geral das Obras. Orientação:
Walter Zanini. São Paulo: MAC/USP, 1973. O Museu de Arte
Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo.São
Paulo: Banco Safra, 1990. Noigandres (São Paulo,
authors’publication):
No. 1, 1952; No. 2, 1955; No. 3, 1956; No.
4, 1958 (folder with poster poems).
Antologia Noigandres 5: do verso ã poesia concreta. Pape, Lygia, curator. Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na
Arte (1950–1962). Exhibition catalogue. Museu de Arte Moderna
do Rio de Janeiro / Pinacoteca do Estado de São
Paulo, 1977. 20 pp. Pedrosa, Mário. “Paulistas e Cariocas”
(Feb.1957). Rpt. in Amaral, ed. Projeto Construtivo
Brasileiro na Arte, 136–38. Pérez-Barreiro, Gabriel. “Geraldo de Barros, Função
diagonal [Diagonal Function], 1952.” In
Pérez-Barreiro, ed. The
Geometry of Hope, 128–30. Pérez-Barreiro, Gabriel, ed. The
Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps
de Cisneros Collection. Exhibition catalogue,
Blanton Museum of Art, U Texas, Pignatari, Décio. “Arte concreta: objeto e objetivo.” AD: Arquitetura e Decoração ( Solt, Mary Ellen, ed. A World
Look at Concrete Poetry. Topical double issue.
Artes Hispanicas / Hispanic Arts 1.3-4
(1968). Rpt. as M.E. Solt, ed. Concrete Poetry: A World View.
Salzstein, Sônia. Franz
Weissmann. Espaços da arte brasileira. Silva, Fernando Pedro da, and Marília
Andrés Ribeiro, coord. Franz
Weissmann: Depoimento. Organização e
entrevista do livro: Marília Andrés Ribeiro Belo Horizonte: C/ arte,
2002. Stolarski, André. Alexandre Wollner e a formação do design moderno no Brasil .
List of Works Shown Fig. 1: Waldemar
Cordeiro (1925-1973), Movimento (Movement), 1951. Tempera on
canvas, 90.2 x 95 cm. São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Universidade
de São
Paulo (USP). Fig. 2: Luiz
Sacilotto (1924-2003), Concreção (Concretion),
1952. Oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm. São Paulo: Coll. Ricard Akagawa. Fig. 3: Geraldo de Barros
(1923-1998) Left: Desenvolvimento de um quadrado [Funço diagonal]
(Development of a Square [Diagonal Function]), 1952. Industrial lacquer
on cardboard, 60 x 60 x 0.3 cm. Coll. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Right: Movimento contra movimento
(Movement against Movement), 1952. Enamel on kelmite, 60 x 60
cm. Switzerland: Coll. Fabiana de Barros. Fig. 4: Maurício
Nogueira Lima (1930-1999), Objeto rítmico No. 2 (Rhythmic
Object No. 2), 1953. “Pintura” on eucatex, 40 x 40 cm, São Paulo: Coll. Luiz
Sacilotto. Fig. 5: Hermelindo
Fiaminghi (1920-2004), Círculos com movimento alternado
(Circles with Alternating Movement), 1953. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 35
cm. Fig. 6: Cover, ad: arquitetura e
decoração, No. 20, December 1956. Fig. 7: Fiaminghi,
Triângulos com movimento em diagonal (Triangles with Diagonal
Movement), 1956. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 60 cm. São Paulo: Coll. Ronaldo Azeredo. Fig. 8: Lothar
Charoux (1912-1987), Desenho (Design), 1956. Ink on paper, 49.3 x 49.2
cm. São Paulo:
Museu de Arte Contemporânea, USP. Fig. 9: Judith
Lauand (b. 1922), Variação em curvas
(Variation in Curves), 1956. Enamel on eucatex, 60 x 60 cm. Fig. 10: Alexandre Wollner (b.
1928), Composição em triângulos
(Composition in Triangles), 1953. Enamel on duratex, 61 x 61 cm.
[Remade in 1977, after original in coll. Max Bill.] Fig. 11: Alfredo Volpi
(1896-1988), Xadres branco e vermelho (White and Red
Checkerboard), 1956. Tempera[?] on canvas, 53 x 100 cm. São Paulo: Coll. João Marino. Fig. 12: Mauricio Nogueira Lima,
Triângulo espiral (Spiral Triangle), 1956. Paint on eucatex, 60
x 60cm Fig. 13: Luiz Sacilotto, Concreção 5624, 1956. Oil on aluminum, 36.5 x 60 x 0.4 cm. Coll.
Renata Feffer. Fig. 14: Waldemar Cordeiro, Idéia
visível (Visible Idea), 1957.¨Tinta e massa s-compensado, 100 x 100
cm. São Paulo:
Pinacoteca do Estado. Fig. 15a: Augusto de Campos (b. 1931), “eis os
amantes” (1953/55) , from Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, recto of inside
cover page. Fig. 15b: Augusto de Campos,
“here are the lovers,” trans. A. de Campos, Marcus Guimarães and Mary Ellen Solt ,
from Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry, verso of inside cover page. Fig. 16: Décio Pignatari (b. 1927), “um movimento,” from Noigandres 3,
1956; English version: Claus Clüver. Fig. 17: Augusto de Campos,
“terremoto” (1956), version published in Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry,
np. Fig. 18: Cover of Noigandres 4, 1958; design:
Hermelindo Fiaminghi. Fig. 19: Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003),
“nascemorre,” Noigandres 4, 1958. Fig. 20: Luiz Sacilotto, Concreção 6048, 1960. Oil on canvas, 60 x 120 cm. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do
Estado. Fig. 21: Ronaldo Azeredo (1937-2006), “ruasol,”,
Noigandres 4, 1958. Fig. 22: José Lino Grünewald
(1931–2000), “vai e vem” (1959), Anthologia Noigandres 5, p.
181. Fig. 23: Cover, antologia noigandres 5, 1962. Fig. 24: Alfredo Volpi, 1960, Coll. D. Pignatari. Fig. 25: Mauricio Nogueira Lima, 1953. Coll. Décio
Pignatari. Fig. 26: Hermelindo Fiaminghi, 1956. Coll. Décio
Pignatari. Fig. 27: Alfredo Volpi, two paintings. Coll. Ronaldo
Azeredo. Fig. 28: Luiz Sacilotto, 1958. Coll.
Ronaldo Azeredo. Fig. 29: Mauricio Nogueira Lima, 1960. Coll. Ronaldo
Azeredo. Fig. 30: Weissmann, Coluna,
1958. Painted iron, 280 x 110 x 75 cm. São Paulo: Museu de Arte
Contemporânea, USP. Photo: Claus Clüver, 1977. Fig. 31: Franz Weissmann, Trãs pontos (Three Points), 1958. Painted iron, 120 x 160 x
160 cm. Photo: Claus Clüver, 1977. Fig. 32: Installation shot,
“Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1950–1962)”, Rio de Janeiro,
Museu de Arte Moderna, 1977, with Franz Weissmann, Círculo inscrito
num quadrado (Circle Inscribed in a Square), 1958. Painted iron,
100 x 100 x 100 cm. Photo: Claus Clüver. Fig. 33: Amilcar de Castro
(1920–2002), steel sculpture displayed in front of the Palácio das
Artes in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, in 1976. Photo: Claus Clüver. Fig. 34: Amilcar de Castro,
steel sculptures displayed in the courtyard of the Palácio das Artes in
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, in 1976. Photo: Claus Clüver.
(according to the list in ad, No. 20, December 1956)
Grupo “Ruptura,” São Paulo (since 1952):
* Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998)
* Lothar Charoux (1912-1987)
* Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973)
* Kazmer (Casimiro) Féjer (b.1922)
* Hermelindo Fiaminghi (1920-2004, joined in 1955)
Leopoldo Haar (1910-1954)
* Judith Lauand (b.1922, joined later)
* Maurício Nogueira Lima (1930-1999; joined in 1953)
* Luís Sacilotto (1924-2003)
Anatol Wladyslaw (1913–2004)
(gave up Concrete art in 1955)
Associated with the group:
Carlos do Val [in 1955)
Antonio Maluf (b. 1926)
* Alfredo Volpi (1896-1988)
* Alexandre Wollner (b. 1928)
Grupo “Frente,” Rio de Janeiro (since 1952):
Eric Baruch (joined in 1955)
* Aluísio Carvão
* Lygia Clark (1920-1988)
* João José da Silva Costa
Vincent Ibberson
* Rubem Mauro Ludolf
* César Oiticica (b. 1939?)
* Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980)
Abraham Palatnik (joined in 1955)
Lygia Pape (1929-2004)
Ivan Serpa
Elisa Martims da Silveira
* Décio Vieira
* Franz Weissmann (1911-2005)
Associated with the group:
* Amilcar de Castro (1920-2002)
Willys de Castro (1926-1988)
* Participated in n the “National Exhibition of Concrete Art,” 1956/57 Grupo “Noigandres”, S?o Paulo (since 1952)
* Augusto de Campos (b. 1931)
* Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003)
* Décio Pignatari (b. 1927)
Associated with the “Noigandres” group:
Edgard Braga (1897-1985)
José Paulo Paes (1926-1998)
Pedro Xisto (1901-1987)
From Rio de Janeiro
* Ronaldo Azeredo (1937-2006)
(joined “Noigandres” in 1956)
* Ferreira Gullar (b. 1930)
* Wlademir Dias Pino (b. 1927)
Not exhibiting:
José Lino Grünewald (1931-2000)
(joined “Noigandres” in 1958)
(2).“Projeto Construtivo
Brasileiro na Arte (1950–1962),” Rio de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Moderna;
São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado 1977.
(3). In the “Casa das
Rosas,” Avenida Paulista,
(4). Memorial exhibition “Arte Concreta Paulista”
at Centro Universitário Maria Antônia da USP, one section of which was
an attempt to reconstruct the “exposição do grupo ruptura no museu de
arte moderna de são paulo 1952". Catalogues: Arte
Concreta Paulista. 5 vols.
(7). Unless otherwise
noted, all translations are my own. The announcement of the exhibition
has been reproduced repeatedly, most recently in Pérez-Barreiro, ed., The
Geometry of Hope, 45. The reception of the program is documented in
Bandeira, org., Arte Concreta Paulista, 46–51.
(8). The images reproduced here are based on
slides I took from the originals, the majority at the 1977 exhibition
“Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1950–1962)” in Rio de Janeiro,
others in the homes of the Noigandres poets, or from documents in
my collection.
(9). Very
perceptively analyzed by Gabriel Pérez-Barreira in The Geometry of
Hope, pp. 128–130 (fig. 16); the design has been reproduced on the
front of the catalogue’s hard-cover edition as a shape embossed on
the uniformly blue cover (replacing the black-white contrast of the
original with a figure-ground relationship).
(10). I have
analyzed this painting more fully in Clüver, “Brazilian Concrete,”
208–09.
(11).This is the title listed in the
exhibition catalogue projeto construtivo brasileiro na arte (1950–1962), 14 (where the date is
given as 1953, apparently erroneously). In Cabral and Rezende, eds, Hermelindo
Fiaminghi, the painting is listed as Círculos Concêntricos e
Alternados, dated 1958 But the painting was included in the
1956/57 exhibit; a black and grey version of the design was featured in
ad, the exhibition catalogue, entitled “movimento alternado”
(n.p.).
(12). I have not
been in a position to follow up on possible changes in ownership since
my 1977 visit in the home of Ronaldo Azeredo.
(13). Sacilotto
called all of his works at that time “Concretions”, which he dated by
year and numbered.
(14). The slogan on the back of the invitation to the
1952 exhibit of Grupo Ruptura (reproduced in Amaral, org., Arte
Construtiva no Brasil 287).
(15). Another
version from 1956, smaller and using different materials (acrylic
on masonite), is reproduced in Pérez-Barreira, ed., The
Geometry of Hope fig. 24, accompanied by an extended analysis by
Erin Aldana, pp. 148, 150.
(16). Mario
Pedrosa, “Paulistas e Cariocas,” 136.
(17). Gullar,
“Manifesto Neoconcreto,” Jornal do Brasil (
(18). Schoenberg’s
idea that by changing instrumental or tone color one could produce an
effect analogous to the melody achieved by changing pitches was
developed more rigorously by Webern in his minimalist compositions.
(19). Augusto had
circulated them among friends as typewritten copies produced by using
colored carbon paper, at the suggestion of Geraldo de Barros (Augusto
de Campos, Interview).
(20). The original can be accessed at
http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/poemas.htm
(21).First published
in 1968 as a topical double issue of Artes Hispanicas / Hispanic
Arts (1.3-4).
(22). “terremoto”
appeared in Antologia Noigandres 5 as an unpublished poem. For
a very detailed analysis of this poem see Clüver, “Augusto de Campos’
‘terremoto’.”
(23). H. de
Campos had introduced the concept of the “open work of art” with regard
to structure and use of materials and the activity of the reader in
1955 (“A Obra de Arte Aberta”), long before Umberto Eco.
(24). “É claro
que certas características da nova poesia foram levadas por nós até o
limite, caso de lemas e temas polémicos como o da “matemática da
composição” e do “poema, objeto útil”. Acho, porém, que essa
radicalidade foi necessária diante da autocomplacência e do
sentimentalismo dominantes em nosso meio. Eu via no “racionalismo sensível” que
sustentávamos o ideário da poesia mesma: chegar a produções às
quais não se pudesse substituir uma palavra, uma letra, deslocar uma
parcela do texto sem que o poema desmoronasse — algo que é afinal a
meta de todos os poetas.” Augusto
de Campos, Interview, 16 Sept. 2006.
(25). See
Clüver, “Concrete Poetry: Critical Perspectives,” 271–72. – Like so
many of these ideograms, “nascemorre” is built entirely on a linguistic
peculiarity (in Portuguese, “nascer” and “morrer” are active verbs, and
personal pronouns are not needed) and on a spelling accident: the two
verb forms have the same number of letters. Moreover, the final sound
of “nasce” happens to equal “se,” and the “re” at the end of “morre”
takes on a function of its own.
(26). For an examination of the way the Noigandres
poets theorized different stages of isomorphism in their work see
Clüver, “Iconicidade.”
(28).These titles may
be part of the polemical opposition of Neoconcretism to Concretism. In
the catalogue of the 1977 “Projeto brasileiro constructive” exhibit the
work is listed as in the caption. However, Salzstein (90–91) captions
the work pictured as Coluna neoconcreta (196 x 76 x 52 cm),
MAC, USP; Ribeiro, opposes pp. 28 and 29 a photo of Coluna
Concretista (1952–53) with two photos of Coluna Neoconcretista
(1958–78, 140 x 50 x 50 cm, no location). In the MAC’s 1973 Catálogo
Gerald as Obras the sculpture shown on plate 147 is listed as Tôrre
(Tower; 1957, 169 X 62.7X 37.2 CM). Catalogues of 1988 (Amaral, Perfil)
and 1990 (O Museu) list no holdings of a Weissmann work.(but I saw the Coluna there in 1996).
(29). For
instance, Haroldo’s poem “mais e menos” was a response to Mondrian’s Plus
and Minus; his poem “branco”, which I discussed long ago as an
intersemiotic transposition of a Mondrian painting such as Composition
in Black, White and Red (1936; see Clüver, “On Intersemiotic
Transposition”), turns out to have been conceived as an homage to
Malevich.
(30). Cf.
Clüver, “The ‘Ruptura’ Proclaimed by
(31). One of the most important is the expansive
catalogue Poésure et Peintrie: «d'un art, l'autre», org. by
Bernard Blistène and Véronique Legrand, accompanying the exhibit of
intermedial poetry held in 1993 in Marseille.
(32). See esp.
Amaral, Arte Construtiva no Brasil (1998), with an extensive
bibliography.
(33). See Ana
Maria Belluzo, Waldemar Cordeiro: Uma aventura da razão (1986);
Isabella Cabral and M. A. Amaral Rezende, Hermelindo Fiaminghi
(1998); Ronaldo Brito, Amilcar de Castro (2001); Enock
Sacramento, Sacilotto (2001); Sônia Salzstein, Franz
Weissmann (2001); Helouise Costa, curator. Waldemar Cordeiro:
A Ruptura
(34). See
Amaral, ed.. Projeto Construtivo
Brasileiro na Arte (1977); Arte Concreta Paulista (2002) –
one of the 5 volumes is dedicated to Grupo Noigandres, curated
by Lenora de Barros and João Bandeira.
Concreta ‘56: a raiz da forma_ [ital.]. Exhibition catalogue, Museu de Arte Moderna, 26 September – 10 December, 2006.
São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 2006.