Gomringer, Eugen (Cachuela Esperanza, Bolivia, 1925- ), the son of a Swiss father and a Bolivian mother, studied politics in Bern and Rome, where he turned to history of art. Working in journalism from 1950, he became co-founder of the art journal Spirale in 1953, when he also published his first experimental poetry, konstellationen, which he defined in his aesthetics, vom vers zur konstellation, zweck und form einer neuen dichtung (1955, in the periodical Alpha). In 1954 he joined the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm as secretary of its principal, the Swiss architect and artist Max Bill. This enabled him to establish contacts with other experimental artists and writers, among them H. Heißenbüttel, whose work was conceived as a form of protest against West Germany's conservative trends. The philosophy underlying his aesthetics was particularly influenced by the mathematician and philosopher Max Bense (1910-90), from 1949 professor at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, whose innovative theories have inspired a wide range of experimental literature. Because his own harmonized closely with that of the Brasilian Noigandres Group and concrete art, Gomringer adopted the term ‘concrete poetry’ (see Konkrete Poesie), in which common words provide the concrete material for graphic designs conceived as ‘denkspiele’. Unlike other representatives of concrete poetry, Gomringer attached particular importance to its suitability for international communication and published his ‘constellations’ in several languages. Proceeding from arrangements analogous to astronomical constellations, he varied his designs to include palindromes, typograms, and pictograms for which he also used the term ideograms; lines repeating a single word and forming a word block, as in ‘schweigen’, and the use of inversion, as in ‘worte sind schatten’, are particularly characteristic. In 1959 he founded the eugen gomringer press which published the series konkrete poesie/poesia concreta (1960-5). His meditative collection das stundenbuch (1965, new edn. in 5 languages, postscript by W. Gössmann, 1980) with its allusion to Rilke, has attracted special attention. After the retirement of Max Bill in the late 1950s Gomringer left Ulm and in 1976 took up an appointment to the chair of aesthetic theory at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. From the 1970s he has continued to promote concrete poetry as an editor, organizer of exhibitions, and custodian of its achievements, publishing the volume visuelle poesie. Ausstellungskatalog in 1972 and Zur Sache des Konkreten (2 vols.) in 1988. Editions of his works include
The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
