Eugen Gomringer © gezett
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Eugen Gomringer (b.1925 in Cachuela Esperanza, Bolivia) is the son of a Bolivian mother and a Swiss father living abroad and grew up in Switzerland. He studied Art History and Economics and was a founder of Concrete Poetry. He spent thirty years writing advertising copy inspired by Concrete Poetry for a department store chain, while also holding professorships in Düsseldorf, Bamberg, Zwickau and Schneeberg. In 2000 he founded the Institute for Constructive Art and Concrete Poetry in the town he had lived in for many years, Rehau in Upper Franconia, where he still lives. His extensive collection of concrete art and poetry formed the basis for the Museum for Concrete Art in Ingolstadt, which opened in 1992.
In 2011 he was awarded the Alice Salomon Poetics Prize for his work. The Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences marked this occasion by placing his 1951 poem ‘ciudad (avenidas)’ on the south face of its building. In 2017 the students’ union objected to this poem being on the wall because it was degrading to women and demanded that it be removed immediately. This sparked off a wide-ranging and heated media debate.
Karl Riha characterises Eugen Gomringer as “the father of the German post-war modern, not only with his programmatic statements but also with extraordinary poetic texts with have retained their power to engage to the present day, and beyond the present day. He is an inventor, in both the technical and the imaginative senses, who has permanently changed the language of literature.”
Gomringer is a member of the PEN Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Bavarian German Work Federation, the Swiss Work Federation and Swiss Industrial Designers.
Gomringer writes in German, Swiss-German, Spanish, French and English.
Publications (selection):
konstellationen, spiral press: Berne 1953
das stundenbuch, Max Hueber Verlag: Munich 1965
Vom Rand nach Innen, die Konstellationen 1951-1995, Collected Works Vol. I, Edition Splitter: Vienna 1995
Theorie der Konkreten Poesie, Texte und Manifeste 1954-1997, Collected Works Band II, Edition Splitter: Vienna1997
Das Stundenbuch: in Kanji und Code, mit Josef Linschinger, Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz: Weitra 2005
100 Jahre Konkrete Kunst - Struktur und Wahrnehmung, Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz: Weitra 2010
admirador. Sonette, Essays, Vorträge, biografische und autobiografische Texte, Prosa und Märchen aus sechzig Jahren, Matthes & Seitz: Berlin 2012
der begegnungen sonette, encounter sonnets (translation into English by Markus Marti), EDITION SIGNAThUR Dozwil: Switzerland 2013