This exhibition was curated by Adriano Spatola and Giovanni Fontana. It is extensively illustrated with examples of concrete and visual poetry and also depicts covers of small magazines published in this field. It provides the largest listing of contemporaneous concrete and visual poets working throughout the world. There is also a section on record jackets of sound poetry recordings. Niccolai and Spatola provide an introductory essay into concrete and visual poetry as follows: "The formulas "concrete" poetry and "visual" poetry are the most widepread in the world but they are only the tip of an iceberg up of at least a hundred definitions, for example: evident poetry, elementary poetry, gestural poetry, symbiotic poetry, ideographic poetry, spatial poetry, artificial poetry, casual poetry and so on. But to simplify matters, in writing this present statement, we will keep ourselves to the trade mark concreto & visuale. This exhibition is both a hypothesis of research and a historical reality. Visual and concrete poetry have a very specific literary role. As every other form of writing, visual and concrete poetry may be studied as iconography in relation to the evolution of communication. As is well known, Italian Futurism made wide use of the visual possibilities of words with the "parole in liberta." The analysis of the material produced by the historical avant-gardes (from the "parole in liberta" of the Futurists to Dadaist graphics and the Surrealist poeme-objet) must be kept in mind by all those who will be looking at this exhibition. It would be absurd to attempt to list all the possible techniques used by contemporary concrete and visual poets. However, we think it useful to mention at least four of them: calligraphy, typewriting, typography and collage. The calligraphic text arises from the will to personalize the transformation of the literary content into visual image (and visual poetry is essentially this transformation). There are at least two ways of solving this problem: 1) calligraphy takes on the shape of the image decided on by the poet; or 2) the technique of writing evolves through ritual forms of visuality (and this tendency is implicit in the history of writing itself). In both cases calligraphy uses all existing ways of notation, be they individual or collective. Thus, the visual poet may also arrive at forms of hyper-graphism which often coincide with the abolition or the destruction of the patent meaning of writing. The typewriter is widely used both by concrete and by visual poets. The graphic results of this tool have the characteristic of being very difficult to reproduce typographically. In fact the typewriter does not have, as does the linotype, differentiated type. Especially in the case of concrete texts this brings about complex exceptions to the rules of the typeline and justification. These texts made with the typewriter have been termed by some critics "mechanic texts". Words may be graphically extended by repeating certain letters rather than others and this of course also corresponds to certain semantic and/or phonic values rather than others. The relationship of the poet with the typewriter tends to be more dynamic than static. In fact, even the pressure of the fingers which "play" on the keyboard produces graphic results on the sheet of paper. At times there are many points of contact between mechanic writing and the automatic writing of the surrealists. When one talks about the typographical poem one is not simply referring to any text composed with the linotype. The typographical characters must be used as elements of an abstract visual composition. In this case it is not the presence of the signifies used as elements of an abstract visual composition. In this case, it is not the presence of the signified which is relevant but the tension of the structure. The problems are similar to those of lettering and design and this is one of the essential tendencies of concrete poetry. In particular we can establish a direct relationship between concrete poetry and the graphics of advertising. In fact in both cases, the texts are elaborated typographically with a method based on the semantic and visual resonances. As opposed to concrete poets for whom words are images, visual poets want an amalgam of word and image, of the iconic elements and the lexical ones. The trend of these last few years is that of giving more and more emphasis to the image. The "poeti visivi" maintain that the image is more effective in the immediacy of communication. The technique of collage allows one to combine materials drawn from the most diverse iconic and verbal sources. These materials are taken from the already existing reality which is that of the mass media. The ideological motivation in this poetry is that the message must be inverted, that is, from positive it must become negative. According to this school of poetry, the receiver of the advertisement must cease to receive the message passively. To these four main techniques must be added at least a very notion of the possibility of combination of these very same techniques without any limits to the procedures which may be used. In fact, the creation of always new movements, each with its own peculiar stamp, is typical of Italian and international concrete and visual poetry. No list of these groups could pretend to be exhaustive as there is a continuous migration of poets from one group to another to individual whims and needs." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.