Maria Elena Minuto, Jan De Vree (eds.), Engaged Visuality: The Italian and Belgian Visual Poetry Phenomenon in the 1960s and 1970s

Engaged Visuality: The Italian and Belgian Visual Poetry Phenomenon in the 1960s and 1970s

edited by Maria Elena Minuto and Jan de Vree

Berlin : De Gruyter Brill, 2026.

In a context of social unrest marked by May 1968, feminist revolt, and the Vietnam War, Italian and Belgian experimental poets drew a cutting-edge roadmap within the intercultural and multilingual landscape of the European visual poetry phenomenon by creating a unique model of interdisciplinary cooperation, whereby transculturalism, verbovisual research, and social criticism converged. Based on an integrated methodology combining the fields of visual arts, comparative literature, and intermedia studies, this volume is the first major publication to adopt interartistic and comparative perspectives in order to approach the Italo-Belgian relational axis in the field of international postwar visual poetics with regard to historic avant-gardes, transnational networks, and counterculture literary magazines.

CONTENT

Acknowledgements

Giuliana Pieri | Royal Holloway University of London
Preface

Maria Elena Minuto | Université de Liège; Royal Holloway University of London
Transculturalism, Verbovisuality, and Intermediality in Italian and Belgian Poetic Counterculture

I. The Reworking of Historic Avant-Gardes in Italian and Belgian Visual Poetry Phenomenon

Caterina Caputo | Università IUAV di Venezia
E. L. T. Mesens’s Verbovisual ­ Collages in Italy in the 1960s: Exhibitions, Contexts, and Legacies

Giorgio Zanchetti | Università degli Studi di Milano Statale
Metacultural Attitudes in Avant-Garde Art and the ­Unconventional Use of Writing: Martino Oberto, Anna Oberto, and the Group of 'Ana Eccetera'

Annalisa Rimmaudo | Musée d'art moderne-Centre Pompidou
'Se il Rosso Non Muove': Program for a Future Avant-Garde

II. The Transnational Network of Visual Poetry in Europe

Kevin Repp | Beinecke Library of Yale
Radical Paths of Postwar ­ Experimental Poetry: Henri Chopin, Sarenco, and the Shifting Alliances of Paul de Vree

Chiara Portesine | Università degli Studi di Ferrara
Gruppo 70 and the Role of Belgian Experimentalism: Redefining the Boundaries of the Italian Neo-Avant-Garde

Juliane Debeusscher | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Engaged Visualities Across the Iron Curtain: Jiři Valoch International Editor for 'Lotta Poetica'

III. Visual Poetry and Neo-Avant-Garde Experimental ­ Literary Magazines

Caitlin Woolsey | Clark Art Institute
Vocal Waves: On the Aesthetics and Politics of the Italian and Belgian Poets in 'OU'

Dirk de Geest | KU Leuven
Engaged Individuality? The Belgian Contribution of 'De Tafelronde' and 'Labris'

Alessandra Acocella | Università degli Studi di Parma
Luciano Caruso and the ­ Inter­ artistic Exchanges with Belgian Avant-Garde Magazines in the 1960s and 1970s

IV. Living Narratives and ­ Chronologies by ­International ­Visual Poets of the 1960s and 1970s

Pasquale Fameli | Università di Bologna
Italo-Belgian Correspondences and Convergences in the ­ International Context of ­Verbovisuality: Scholarly Interview with Lamberto Pignotti

Christoph Benjamin Schulz
A Life Among Letters: Scholarly Interview with Alain Arias-Misson

Index