Archivio Conz

Eugene Gomringer (b. 1925 in Cachuela, Bolivia, lives and works in Bamberg, Germany) is a poet and literary critic regarded as the father of concrete poetry in Europe. Gomringer’s concrete poetry demonstrated a reduction of language in an age of communication overload. His compositions are concise and memorable, presented as an independent universe, an object. Parallel to intensified activity as a literary critic, Gomringer published substantial collections of his compositions, including Worte sind schatten, Die Konstellationen 1951–1968 (1968). Poems such as “Wind,” “Ping Pong,” and the paradigmatic “Schweigen,” are the focus of the series of editions on cloth published in collaboration with Francesco Conz in 1990. In these cases, the meaning of the single word is evoked by its repetition in the textual space and the resulting reading action. Gomringer was honored with the Cultural Prize of the City of Rehau, where he also founded the Institute for Constructive Art and Concrete Poetry in 2000. In 2022, he received the Pro meritis scientiae et litterarum lifetime achievement award from the state of Bavaria.