VIOLA'S VISUAL POETRY WORKS

The Monocromi di poesia (Poetry monochromes) [...] can be considered one of the results of that experimental research on the poetic language which is a fundamental aspect of my artistic activity.

They are the fruit of a new consideration of the linguistic value of some poetical materials I had experimented between 1971 and 1972 as part of an analysis of the relations between word, image and matter, and they are also the fruit of the attempt to re-introduce them as fundamental elements in an experimentation of poetical behaviour based on the relationship between word and gesture, verbal and iconic-gestural signs.

So the relationship can no longer be qualified as a neutral background receiving a verbal or chromatic inscription but, through the manipulatory gesture, the manifestation of a mode of behaviour, which becomes an active and integrated moment of verbal and gestural communication, while the chromatic choice expresses the psychological nature of the creation, a well-defined and definable moment of the mental and perceptive spectrum.
(L. Viola, 1975)