For immediate release
March 30, 2005

Visual Poetry: Contemporary Art from Italy.

(Milwaukee) The Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, will present La Poesia Visiva, Visual Poetry, April 7th through July 24th. This is the first US exhibition for the Italian artists Giuseppe Chiari, Claudio Francia, Eugenio Miccini, and Lamberto Pignotti. The exhibit includes 40 works, ten from each of the artists.

The exhibition will open Thursday April 7th, with a lecture, entitled A True Interaction: Expanding Poetry in Several Directions, by Dr. Simon Anderson, associate professor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The artist Claudio Francia, and essayist Enrico Mascelloni, will be in attendance at the opening and will speak to various other groups at the museum during his stay in Milwaukee. A reception will follow the lecture from 7 to 8 p.m.

The four artists featured in the exhibition began working together in the 1960's, and continue their work today. Their art examines the relationship between language and visual imagery. Using words and images collected from popular magazines and newspapers, the artists combine these elements to explore the tension between mass media and visual art. Their work included performance art and music as well as poetry readings. The history of Visual Poetry derives from Futurism, an early 20th century artistic movement, but moves beyond the Futurists by connecting to ordinary language and popular media.

According to Curtis L. Carter, director of the Haggerty and curator of the exhibition, "The purpose of Visual Poetry is to provide the viewer with critical tools, to examine the role of interpersonal communication in the age of mass-media technology. The visual poetry artists believe that the purpose of art is to engage in critical activity. By juxtaposing of words and visual elements they hope to engage the viewers to critique the role of mass media."

The Visual Poets, in Italy during the 1960s and beyond, were working at the same time as pop artists in the U.S., such as Andy Warhol, but had different aims. Pop art reflects the values of the culture without the critical edge that the visual poets provide. Visual Poets are among the first to have responded to critically mass media languages and images in a radically critical manner.

Lamberto Pignotti was born in Florence in 1926. He has long been fascinated with the rapport between art, criticism, language, and poetry. In 1944, he was deeply influenced by the avant-garde, Futurists, and Dada artists and writers, which led to his first experiments with verbal-visual artwork. In 1962, Pignotti created his first visual poem. The year after, he founded the Gruppo 70, a collective of visual poetry artists. This group was later crucial to the founding of Gruppo 63, the visual poet collective that coined the term Poesia Visiva or visual poetry. He has participated in numerous national and international conventions, debates, conferences, and festivals. As a visual poet who has won numerous awards and critical acclaim, Pignotti continues to pursue his artistic vision of multi-sensory esthetics and artistic theories. Currently he lives in Rome.

Born in Florence on June 22, 1925, Eugenio Miccini attended college and later studied at a seminary. In 1961, he won first prize at the City of Florence poetry competition, and served as editor of Literature. Miccini expanded his repertoire to include visual elements. He turned to Futurism, Surrealism, Dadaism, and in particular Berlin Dadaism for inspiration. In 1962, he started writing visual poetry. A year later, Miccini co-founded Gruppo 70, as well as participating in Gruppo 63. In 1969, he founded Techne Centre, the Technology Center an innovative and experimental workshop, directed towards newly founded theatre companies. Miccini's work has been the subject of several books, competitions, and studies, and is included in many Italian and international poetry anthologies. His art has been displayed in prominent public collections, including the Venice Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Gallery of Modern Art in Mantova, among others.

Claudio Francia was born in Pesaro, Italy in 1952, but moved to Paris in 1960, and later to London. In 1984, he returned to Paris, where he started writing, painting, and making his first videos. This led to Francia's efforts to produce films in the style of a magazine that moved at a precise speed to convey the thoughts and ideas of poets, musicians, authors, and playwrights. His films were shown on different French television stations, but also were acquired by museums and cultural centers. As a visual poet, he attempted to distance himself from traditional visual poets by engaging the spectator. His first face to face contacts with other visual poets began after his 1984 return to Paris. Since then he has established himself as an important member of the second generation of visual poets.

Giuseppe Chiari was born in Florence in 1926. While at the University of Florence, he was enrolled in the engineering department, but studied music at the same time. Since the 1950s, he has been experimenting with musical composition. Together with Piero Grossi, he co-founded the Vita Musicale Contemporanea (Contemporary Musical Life Association) in 1961. In 1962, Chiari joined the international Fluxus movement and participated in the first Fluxus Festival. Fluxus was a cosmopolitan, mixed conceptual art movement; it was based on the concept of cooperation among different artistic expressions crossed by media communication and the idea of integrating art into life. Chiari's statements "Art is easy" and "All music is the same" are often used in his work, often written violently, and result in real "visual concept works."

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Haggerty Museum will produce an exhibition catalogue that documents the works in the exhibition.; Enrico Mascelloni, international authority on visual poetry, will provide the essay Manifest, Poetry Again: Four Protagonists of Italian Visual Poetry; Simon Anderson will contribute the essay A True Interaction; and Dr. Curtis L. Carter, director of the Haggerty Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition, will contribute an introductory essay.

The Museum is also working with many public and private schools, universities, and other organizations to on various educational programs. Free guided tours of the exhibition and a poetry reading are on the schedule of public programs.

The Visual Poetry exhibition sponsors include the Meyer and Norma L. Ragir Foundation and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

The Haggerty Museum of Art is located at North 13th St. and West Clybourn Avenue on the campus of Marquette University. Museum hours are Monday - Wednesday, Friday - Saturday, 10 am-4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 am-8 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-5 p.m.. Free parking is available in the Mary B. Finnigan Parking Lot (enter on 11th St. through Marquette Lot J). For more information on Visual Poetry please contact Brian Moore at 1-(414)-288-7290.