Words at Large — E.M. de Melo e Castro: The Artist and his Collection

Exhibition Opening: 21 September at 5:30pm

This exhibition pays homage to the poet, essayist and artist, E.M. de Melo e Castro (Covilhã,Portugal, 1932 – São Paulo, Brazil, 2020), a key figure in Portuguese Experimental Poetry who played a central role in promoting visual poetry at the national and international levels. The exhibition highlights the relevance and scope of his work as an artist and cultural promoter. It includes an important group of works by Melo e Castro, as well as a selection of works by Portuguese and international artists belonging to the artist’s extensive collection dedicated to visual poetry, which integrates in the collection of the Serralves Foundation’s Library since 2003.

Melo e Castro’s work questions the sign, the object and the creative process from his infinite curiosity about the way in which technology redefines the situations of communication and signification in contemporary life, crossing the experience of new paths with theoretical reflection. The exhibition features a selection of the artist’s work from the 1960s to 1990s, including some of the most celebrated kinetic poems and ideograms, as well as some of his iconic light machines and pioneering videopoems.

As a theorist and promoter of visual poetry, Melo e Castro was a vital figure in the international network of artists who, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, shared the desire to renew literature and the arts — and the collection of artist’s books and publications he compiled is evidence of this. The E.M. de Melo e Castro Collection consists of hundreds of publications from 17 countries, and includes monographs, magazines, pamphlets, posters, and object-poems. Its breadth makes it possible to analyse the various anti-literary experiences that radically changed our relationship with the spoken and written word from the 1950s onwards. The exhibition includes a selection of the most important publications of concrete and visual poetry and of POEX, the Portuguese Experimental Poetry group, showcasing its historical precedents and highlighting the diversity of experiments around the plasticity of language occurring all over the world.

This exhibition is part of the Touring Exhibitions Programme of the Serralves Collection, which aims to make the Foundation’s collection accessible to different audiences across the country.

Production: Fundação de Serralves — Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto