Concrete (Visual) Poetry
Concrete (Visual) Poetry
Tropicália, also known as Tropicalismo, is a Brazilian art movement that originated in the late 1960s. Tropicália, as an artistic movement, involved theatre, music, poetry and art. Tropicália was influenced by what is called Concrete Poetry, a variant genre of the Brazilian avant-garde poetry embodied in the works of the movement.
Concrete Poetry is sometimes called Size Poetry or Visual Poetry. This type of poetry involves the typographical arrangement of words in order to form a poem as well as a visual impression. The arrangement of the words are designed to convey a particular meaning or meanings both visually and poetically. It is important to note that the composition of words, visually, are just as important as the text of the poem.
The first examples of Concrete Poetry were shown in São Paulo, Brazil during a 1956 exhibition by Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos and Wlademir Dias Campos, among others. The major idea involved here, as stated in the manifesto of the group Noigandres (the group who staged the first exhibition), is that the words, as an integral part of the visual work, allows for the words themselves to become a part of the poetry – not just a blank background for the ideas.
Poets and artists today are still involved with the interactive aspects of this type of poetry in order to create a word/visual synergy between words, letters and compositions of the same.
