The art critic Walter Zanini introduces the exhibition Poéticas Visuais, which he describes as an opportunity to see the work of artists who work in multimedia. He stresses the considerable involvement of other countries in the event in order to document the activity of art organizations and artists with very limited capacity to exhibit beyond the usual restricted circuits. He refers to the presence of many works that are based on an interaction between word and image that is achieved through a wide variety of technical means, especially in the area of inter-semiotics. There are a great number of publications and artist’s books, and many unknown artists involved, which contributes to a certain unevenness in the exhibition, an event which Zanini considers to be of great interest and inevitable importance for this innovative facet of the arts. He mentions the unusual fact that copies of the exhibited documents have been used to create a portable exhibition.      

The Poéticas Visuais exhibition was organized by the critic, curator, and art historian Walter Zanini (1925–2013) and the intermedia artist, printmaker, and professor Julio Plaza (1938–2003) at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo from September 29 to October 30, 1977. A great many of the works in the exhibition were sent by mail from a number of Latin American and European countries.

Zanini was the first director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (affiliated with the USP), a post that he held from 1963 to 1978, where he sought to promote the work of new artists and marginalized forms of artistic expression. He was also one of the curators at the Primera Bienal de São Paulo (1951).

Plaza was originally from Madrid, Spain, and was a professor at the Department of Multimedia at UNICamp and at the Department of Visual Arts at ECA-USP. His name is associated with art and technology events. He worked with the concrete poet Augusto de Campos (b. 1931) to produce two volumes of poems that could be manipulated by the reader: Poemóbiles (1974) and Caixa preta (1975), in which the printed texts could be changed into objects that could be manipulated.  

In regard to this text, see by Walter Zanini, “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” [doc. no. 1111029]; and “[Incontáveis artistas] = [Countless Artists] [doc. no. 1110891].

In reference to this matter, see by Julio Plaza, “Poéticas visuales,” Poéticas Visuales (São Paulo: MAC-USP, 1977).