Heinz Gappmayr – 5 Papierskulpturen

Heinz Gappmayr (1925–2010) was one of the most influential representatives of concrete and visual poetry internationally. In 1962 he created five small paper sculptures, now held by the poet and artist’s estate, which are published here for the first time: a cube, a pyramid and three cuboids – three different elementary geometric bodies that Gappmayr marked with typewritten words, word fragments and letter constellations, thus transforming them into poem-objects. These works show Gappmayr as a literary sculptor. Sculptural poetry – the plastic spatialisation of writing and the objectification of words – represented an important strategy for the expansion of poetic creation and the conception of literary works in the 1960s and 1970s.