Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This brochure was designed in 1996 for the exhibition Desexp(l)os(ign)ição (a compound word meaning something like ignited-signs-that-do-not-explode-in-the-non-exhibition). This event was a historical celebration of the Exposiç& [...]

This essay, written by Gilberto Mendes, the Brazilian composer of experimental music, appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1977). Mendes provides a brief description of how creators of Concrete poetry [...]

This essay, written by Wilson Coutinho, the Brazilian curator and art critic, appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte (1977). Coutinho discusses the context in which Concrete poetry developed in Brazil in [...]

In this essay Luiz Antônio de Figueiredo discusses some of the parallel developments in the fields of Concrete poetry and Concrete art. In the 1950s “they both started to map out the routes of non-figurative art, which was exploring [...]

In this essay, the Brazilian poet Philadelpho Menezes pinpoints the origins of visual poetry, coining an expression to classify its forms, “intersign poetry.” He observes that visual poetry is not a synonym for “Concrete poetry,” even if that [...]

This is an interview with Julio Plaza where he revealed his personal views about art, stating that he considered it a cultural product, as he did not believe it had the capability to universally please all audiences and social groups. He commented on [...]

In this text, Brazilian poet Augusto de Campos presents the aims of Concrete poetry and explains how it transcends the historical parameters of the poetry tradition. Noigandres—the group that de Campos represents—envisions “the word” as an [...]

This article by the Brazilian poet Augusto de Campos, which sounds like a manifesto, lists the conceptual guidelines and the historical and theoretical references of concrete poetry. It underscores that the movement represents “the end of a [...]

In this editorial, which appeared in the magazine A & D (Arquitetura & Decoração), Décio Pignatari discusses the poetry that was presented at the I Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta (1956). When concrete [...]

The text for the exhibition catalog De la figuración al arte de sistemas [From Figuration to Systems Art] (Buenos Aires: CAyC, 1970) describes and analyzes a number of works by Edgardo Antonio Vigo and also discusses his creative making. According [...]

This text is a programmatic source that reports the active participation of the Concrete Invention at the core of a socialist construction of the world that would be based on the creation of new natural elements, both mechanical and technical [...]

This document is a programmatic source that established the bases for the creation of Argentinean concrete poetry and how it differed from other forms of poetry that, until that time, related poems to certain objects in the search for logical meaning [...]

This article by Edgar Bayley reviews the different movements of modern poetry until it arrives at Invencionismo [Invention-ism], a movement in which words were composed in a new order quite different from logic, thus transforming them into the real [...]