Archivio Conz

Eugenio Miccini (1925 Florence, Italy – 2007 Florence) was regarded as the original father of Italian visual poetry. Miccini collaborated with Silvio Ramat and Lamberto Pignotti on the leftist magazine Quartiere, which propagated an approach to “technical poetry”. In 1963, he co-founded “Gruppo ’70,” which brought together musicians, poets, and avant-garde artists under new experiments in visual poetry. Several events were held in Florence in 1963 and 1964, emphasizing relationships between art and communication, technology, mixed media operations, and interdisciplinary art. In 1969, he founded the magazine Tèchne, promoting publications of artists’ books and volumes of experimental theatre. Miccini worked with mixed media, creating collages with newspaper cutouts, such as Garden Puzzle (1977), and objects, such as Software (1979), a book made of fabric and wood in a Plexiglas box, both of which are part of the Conz collection. He also worked with Sarenco, contributing to the magazine Lotta Poetica (1972) and collaborating with the “Gruppo di Nove” in 1973. In 1983, he founded the international group “Locomotives,” which brought together poets from France, Belgium, and the United States. Throughout his life, Miccini wrote and published over seventy volumes of fiction and nonfiction. Miccini’s works can be found in collections at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the BWA Museum in Lublin, as well as in galleries in Mantua, Bologna, Antwerp, and Tokyo, among others. His works were exhibited at four editions of the Biennale di Venezia (1972, 1980, 1986, 1993), as well as at the Quadriennale di Roma (1986), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1970), and the Palazzo Forti in Verona (1988).