Concrete Poetry: Exchanges between Brazil and Italy 1950-1980

This paper aims to analyze the dense network of relationships between artists of Brazilian and Italian Concrete Poetry in the period of greatest expansion of the movement, between the early 1950s and the end of the 1970s. The idea is to critically evaluate the artistic and theoretical repercussions of the early Brazilian experience on subsequent experiments carried out in Italy. In 1953, Carlo Belloli — leading exponent of the Second Futurism — visited São Paulo for the first time with the delegation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of which he was general secretary. Two years before Belloli’s visit to São Paulo, some of his experiments had been exhibited at the Circulo Cultural Paulista (1951), and his work had become known in Brazilian avant-garde circles. In 1952, the brothers Augusto and Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari, founded the group and journal Noigandres. Four years later, the group organized the National Exposition of Concrete Art of São Paulo, a wide-ranging show that made the Brazilian movement known in the international art scene. Both experiences had a strong and lasting resonance in Italy. Through the study of archival materials, this paper analyzes the circulation and fortune of Brazilian Concrete Poetry in the Italian verbal-visual landscape, shedding light on a significant episode of the artistic exchange between Brazil and Italy.