Women in concrete poetry

Women in concrete, visual, and sound poetry

Works

Anni Albers, Typewriter study to create textile effect, n.d. Typewriter printing in blue ink on paper mounted on board, 27 x 16.8 cm. Made on Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter. (Source). Printed in 1974 monograph by Albers. More.

Mary Ellen Solt, Moonshot Sonnet, 1964. The poem is "composed from reformatted diagrammatic-codes initially used by NASA-engineers to plan and execute the moon landing. The engineers placed the diagrammatic-codes over photographs of the lunar surface, and Solt abstracted the diagrams without any photographic reference. Using the codes, she transformed the result into a sonnet, with the codes appearing in “exactly fourteen “lines” with five “accents,”” a Petrarchan or Italianate sonnet" [1].

Neide Sá, Transparência, 1968. Acrylic, serigraphy, 20 x 20 x 20 cm. (Source).

Ewa Partum, Active Poetry, 1971-1973. 8 mm film, b&w, no sound, 5'53". Documentation of five actions in the surroundings of Warsaw. For her action in 1971, "the artist cut up a single page of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and scattered the individual letters in a pedestrian arcade in Warsaw. The letters became distributed through the space creating new texts and chance meetings as passers-by moved around the arcade. The concept marked a turning point in Partum’s career and is one with which she has continued to play in order to critique the means and modes of textual production. Partum went on to create a series of works using letter cut-outs, often releasing them into natural spaces, including the ocean and a hilltop." [2]. View film on Filmoteka. Tate. Reina Sofia. Generali. 2006 re-creation at Tate.

Mirella Bentivoglio, L’(assente), positivo/negativo, segno/figura [The Absent One, Positive/Negative, Sign/Figure], 1971. Serigraph on paper, 62.55 x 48.26 cm. (Source).

Mirtha Dermisache, Diario No. 1, Año 1, 1972. Chinese ink and marker on paper, 46.4 × 35.6 cm. Source.

Mirella Bentivoglio, E = congiunzione [And = Conjunction], 1973. Serigraph on paper, 20.96 x 29.85 cm. (Source).

Cover of Cozette de Charmoy's collage novel The Colossal Lie (Collection OU 4), 1974.

Mary Ellen Solt's contribution (ZigZag) to Arti visive. Poesia visiva, 1976. (Source).

Liliana Landi's contribution to Arti visive. Poesia visiva, 1976. (Source).

Mirella Bentivoglio, Io [Me], 1979. Photo­mech­anical print on paper, 60 x 40 cm. (Source).

Mirella Bentivoglio, Moduli a E [E Combinations], 1980. Ink on paper drawings after 1977 wooden constructions, 29.53 x 20.96 cm. (Source).

Irma Blank, Radical Writings, Rosa geatmet, rosa gechrieben [Pink Breathed, Pink Scripted], 1987. Acrylic on canvas (diptych), 2 × 2.4 m. Photograph: C. Favero. (Source).

Irma Blank, Osmotic Drawings D-7, 1996. Acrylic on paper, 23 × 30 cm. Photograph: C. Favero. (Source).

See also Women in Concrete Poetry channel on Are.na.

Sound works

Anastasia Bitzos, Konkrete Poesie, Sound Poetry, Artikulationen, 1966, vinyl LP; 2004, CD. A selected documentation of the performance organized by Anastasia Bitzos on 26 May 1966 in the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland: "Konkrete Poesie, in Tonband, Lichtbild und Lesung". The production of the performance, the selection and the compiling of the record made by Anastasia Bitzos. Compositions by Bremer, Jandl, Gomringer, Mon, de Campos, Greenham, Bense, De Vree, Döhl, Geissbühler. Discogs.

Katalin Ladik, Ballada az ezüstbicikliről (1962-1968), Novi Sad: Forum Könyvkiadó, 1969. Texts.

Lily Greenham, Internationale Sprachexperimente der 50/60er jahre / International Language Experiments of the 50/60ies: Tendentious Neo-Semantics 1970 in English, Frankfurt am Main: Hoffmann, 1970, vinyl LP. Lily Greenham reading poems by Peter Greenham, Jandl, Mills, Morgan, Cobbing, Gamier, Bense, de Campos, Braga, Pignateri, Rühm, Arias-Misson, Heissenbüttel, Molero, Sanmark, Steen, and her own poetry. Discogs.

Katalin Ladik, Phonopoetica (Phonetic Interpretations of Visual Poetry), Belgrade: Galerija studentskog kulturnog centra, 1976, 7" vinyl. Discogs. [3].

Lily Greenham, Lingual Music, Paradigm Discs, 2007, 2xCD. Works from 1968-1974. Discogs.

Writings, statements

Lily Greenham, "Lingual Music", in Kontextsound, ed. Michael Gibbs, Amsterdam: Kontexts Publications, 1977, p 22.

Paula Claire, "The Notation of My Sound Poetry", Open Letter 5:7, Spring 1984. [4]

Mary Ellen Solt, "Concrete Steps to an Anthology", in Experimental, Visual, Concrete: Avant-garde PoetrySince the 1960s, eds. K. David Jackson, Eric Vos, and Johanna Drucker, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996, pp 347-352.

Maria Demon, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "Desiring Visual Texts: A Collage and Embroidery Dialogue", Jacket2, 25 Mar 2013.

Poets, artists, collectives

• Mary Ellen Solt (1920-2007)
• Betty Danon (1920-2002)
• Mirella Bentivoglio (1922-2017)
• Salette Tavares (1922-1994)
• Lily Greenham (1924-2001)
• Ilse Garnier (1927)
• Greta Monach (1928)
• Hannah Weiner (1928-1997)
• Ana Hatherly (1929-2015)
• Françoise Janicot (1929-2017)
• Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (1932)
• Lucia Marcucci (1933)
• Giulia Niccolai (1934)
• Irma Blank (1934)
• Susan Howe (1937)
• Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976)
• Cozette de Charmoy (1939)
• Liliane Lijn (1939)
• Paula Claire (1939)
• Mirtha Dermisache (1940-2012)
• Neide Sá (1940)
• Elena Asins (1940-2015)
• Katalin Ladik (1942)
• Ann Noël (1944)
• Ewa Partum (1945)
• Michèle Métail (1950)
• Ana María Uribe (1951-2004)
• Johanna Drucker (1952)
• Erica Baum (1961)
• Jen Bervin (1972)
• Francesca Capone (1987)

Exhibition catalogues

• 

  Arti visive. Poesia visiva, 1976.

• 

  Materializzazione del linguaggio, 1978.

Group exhibitions

Arti visive. Poesia visiva. / Visual Poetry by Women, an International Exhibition in Venice, ed. Mirella Bentivoglio, intro. Franca Zoccoli, Rome: Studio d'Arte Contemporanea, 1976, [27] cards+[3] leaves, 22 x 16 cm. Introduction, Artist list. A gathering of artists’ cards documenting visual and concrete poetry all created by women from Italy, England, Germany, United States, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Canada, and Japan. Organized by Bentivoglio, this multiyear exhibit traveled form city to city throughout Italy (Milan, Savona, Rome, Turin) starting in 1972. Participating artists: Annalisa Alloatti, Mirella Bentivoglio, Irma Blank, Paul Claire, Lia Drei, Ulrike Eberle, Anna Esposito, Amelia Etlinger, Gisela Frankenberg, Ilse Garnier, Bohumila Grögerová, Ana Hatherly, Annalies Klophaus, Liliana Landi, Giulia Niccolai, Anna Oberto, Anezia Pacheco e Chaves, Marguerite Pinney, Betty Radin, Giovanna Sandri, Mira Schendel, Mary Ellen Solt, Chima Sunada, Salette Tavares, Biljana Tomić, Patrizia Vicinelli. [5] (Italian),(English)

Materializzazione del linguaggio, ed. Mirella Bentivoglio, Biennale di Venezia 1978-Arti visive e architettura, 1978, 55 pp. Catalogue for exh. held 20 Sep-15 Oct 1978 featuring works by 86 women artists. Text by Mirella Bentivoglio, biographies of the exhibiting artists including Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Irma Blank, Mirella Bentivoglio, Lia Dreai, Chiara Diamantini, Elisabetta Gut, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Simona Weller, Carla Vasio, Giulia Niccolai, Paola Levi Montalcini, Maria Lai, Tomaso Binga. [6] {{it}

Solo exhibitions

Mirella Bentivoglio: Pages: Selected Works, 1966-2012, ed. & intro. Frances K. Pohl, Claremont, CA: Pomona College Museum of Art, 2015, 152 pp, Excerpt (pp 57-90). This book is the first museum publication in English on Italian artist Mirella Bentivoglio (born 1922). It includes critical essays by art historians Frances K. Pohl, Leslie Cozzi and Franca Zoccoli, interviews with Bentivoglio and John David O'Brien, and a biographical note by Rosaria Abate, plus a bibliography. The book highlights work from the recent exhibition at the Pomona College Museum of Art, which surveyed nearly 50 years of the artist's work as an internationally renowned member of the Concrete and visual poetry movements. Including works in paper, stone, metal, wood, cloth, plastic and Plexiglass and with numerous previously unpublished images, it reveals the ways in which Bentivoglio engaged with many of the most significant formal and theoretical issues of postwar art--for example, the relationship between image and text, the impact of mass media and consumer culture, feminist critiques of patriarchy and artistic interventions in public spaces. Exhibition: Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, USA (20.01-17.05.2015). [7] (English)

Cozette de Charmoy: Podróże wyobraźni, eds. Urszula Czartoryska and Jaromir Jedlinski, Lodz: Muzeum sztuki, 1987, [16] pp. (Polish)

Archives, resources

Paula Claire Archive; fromWORDtoART - International PoetArtists, an international archive of sound and visual poetry, est. 1983. The archive containing over 5,000 books, poem objects, exhibition catalogues, cassettes and CDs, was gathered by exchanging Claire's Little Press publications with fellow international poets, and is the basis of illustrated talks and displays.

Reception, art historical studies, theory

OEI 51: "Mary Ellen Solt: Towards a theory of concrete poetry", ed. & forew. Antonio Sergio Bessa, Stockholm, 2010. [8] [9] (English)

Leslie Cozzi, "Notes on the Index, Continued: Italian Feminism and the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca", Cahiers d’études italiennes 16, 2013, pp 213-234. (English)

Elisabeth A. Frost, "Visual Poetics", in A History of Twentieth-Century American Women's Poetry, ed. Linda A. Kinnahan, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp 339-358.

See also

Concrete poetry, Sound poetry