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Noigandres 4 cover

Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Ronaldo Azeredo. Noigandres 4. 1957

Augusto de Campos (Brazilian, b. 1931), Haroldo de Campos (Brazilian, 1929–2003), Décio Pignatari (Brazilian, born 1927), Ronaldo Azeredo (Brazilian, 1937–2006). Noigandres 4. 1957. Design by by Hermelindo Fiaminghi. Journal, 15 3/4 x 11 7/16" (40 x 29 cm). The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Gift of Andrea and Jose Olympio da Veiga Pereira, 2011. © Augusto De Campos

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The de Campos brothers from São Paulo, considered to be the fathers of postwar Concrete poetry, used language as material, like paint, creating poems to be looked at as well as read. “The new poem is simple and can be perceived visually as a whole as well as in its parts,” they wrote in 1954. “It becomes an object to be both seen and used.” To reinforce the quality of words as things in themselves, the de Campos brothers labored to rid their poems of symbolic references, allusions, and metaphor. Their influential journal Noigandres, coedited with poets Décio Pignatari and Ronaldo Azeredo (five issues were published between 1952 and 1962), featured work by an international array of Concrete poets. It inspired many artists in Latin America and Europe and contributed to the flowering of Concrete poetry experiments internationally.