Ugo Carrega

This work reflects the conception of “new writing” elaborated by Ugo Carrega: a writing made of the totality of signs that is not only a representation of reality, but represents the desire to bring art into reality. Carrega investigates through his artistic practice a model of language that wants to be the thought and not the reality, or the thing per sé. In this work Carrega composes words on canvas, similar to short haiku poems, expressing a synthesis between poetry and painting with a strong lyrical component.

Ugo Carrega (1935–2014). Already in the late 1950s, Carrega experimented with sound and phonetic materials in order to try to get closer to the sound, and get away from the word. In 1958, he published his first collection of poems and his first magazine. Between 1965 and 1966, he developed an original form of visual writing, called “symbiotic writing”. At the same time, he collaborated with various magazines including Marcatrè and Lotta Poetica. In 1971, he opened the Centro Tool in Milan, where he organized various exhibitions on verbo-visual experimentation. Over time the notion of “symbiotic writing” evolved into “new writing. In 1988 with Paolo Della Grazia, he founded the Archive of New Writing, one of the largest collections of verbo-visual experimentation currently preserved at the Mart Rovereto (Italy).