Breaking Lines: The World Wide Poetry Network, 1900 - 2000 - Works from the Bonotto Collection

15 Jan-11 May 2025

Overview

Taking Futurism’s bold, unconventional approach to language and typography as its starting point, Breaking Lines leads visitors through 100 years of international poetic innovation and experimentation. The twentieth century saw the emergence of a number of significant verbo-visual movements and tendencies, including Concrete and Sound Poetry, all of which shared F.T. Marinetti’s ambition to “redouble the expressive force of words” by emphasising and exploiting the visual and sonic dimensions of language. Many of these avant-garde schools and associations also shared Futurism’s vision of artistic expression as a vehicle for changing the world – an ambition that is reflected in much of the material included in the show.

At the heart of the exhibition is a consideration of the long-standing role played by journals in the dissemination of cutting-edge poetic research, and of their remarkable success in fostering an international creative community in the pre-Internet age. The publications on display were militant organs, active laboratories, experimentations in print. Through journals such as Blast, Geiger, Noigandres and Poor. Old. Tired. Horse, artists and visual poets developed new expressive possibilities and aesthetic solutions – and all the major avant-garde movements published their manifestos and works in them.

Curated by Patrizio Peterlini, Director of the Fondazione Bonotto, the exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue and a vibrant programme of events, including performances and conversations with artists and poets. The show includes a nucleus of important works by Carlo Belloli, whose minimalist compositions of the 1940s anticipated Concrete poetry. Works will also be featured by figures such as Vincenzo Accame, Julien Blaine, Francesco Cangiullo, Luciano Caruso, Tullio Crali, Paul De Vree, John Furnival, Eugen Gomringer, Corrado Govoni, Brion Gysin, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Isidore Isou, Richard Kostelanetz, Arrigo Lora Totino, Lucia Marcucci, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Eugenio Miccini, Franz Mon, Lamberto Pignotti, Sarenco, Patrizia Vicinelli, Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Emmett Williams.