ANTECEDENTS Concrete poetry & Concrete movement: Brazilian contribution to art history The ‘Concrete Movement’ is considered an outcome product from the necessity to build an identity and also be universal. It placed Brazil on the artistic international route. Being mainly visual and playful, it communicates easy: without language boundaries, it invites all spectators to a tacit dialogue and visual interaction. I see in this movement some parallels to my doctorate research (Rodrigues González, 2010) focused on androgyny, where gender is no longer binary but open to all possibilities. In other words, I apply my concept of androgyny 2 (from “andro” to “gyne”, every single possibility in-between is welcomed in an all-inclusive logic) to my artwork, combining curves and lines, phallic and oval shapes, geometry, illusion (displacement and image manipulation), movement and abstraction when portraying people, landscape and colours. As a matter of fact, not only is the visual aspect—geometric shapes, besides words and letters (dis)placement—what characterizes the concrete poem but also the possibility of having different lectures and the vibration of sound intersections, sometimes even rhymes. It communicates at different levels, not being restricted to a linear and/or rigid structure. It is “verbivocovisual” and free. Its liberty is reflected in the use of words (“verbo”), voice/sound (“voco”) and shape/form (“visual”). These features can be easily noticed in Décio Pignatari, Haroldo and Augusto de Campos brothers’ poems. In 1958, these three poets founded the “Concrete Manifesto.” According to the manisfesto3, “the poem communicates itself by its own structure”. Concrete poetry turns texts into visual art, crossing time and bridging visual art with abstraction and words.
For more information about my thesis and the concept of androgyny I work with, please access: http://eprints.ucm.es/10764/ 3 T h e ‘Concrete Manifesto’ was published by the three mentioned poets in the magazine Noigrandes, nº 4, São Paulo, 1958. 2
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