Waldemar Cordeiro and Franz Mon
Tobi Maier

The publication presents selected works from two pioneers of Concrete Art and Poetry, Waldemar Cordeiro (1925-1973) from Brazil and Franz Mon (1926) from Germany. The exhibited pieces reach from the mid-1960’s to the present and combine sculpture, collage, and computer printouts with typewriter text and sound work. With a mutual interest in the deconstruction of the photographic image, language and typography, the work of both artists oftentimes follows rigid concepts. Attributes of Concrete Art such as the structural focus on materials and processes, the appropriation of constructivist language, and the search for the general reduction of expressive means emanate from their practice. Logic and rationality became a founding principle of The Ruptura Group, which Cordeiro was involved with in the São Paulo of the 1950’s. Similar characteristics can also be found in the work of Mon who says that »Concrete Poetry for me is poetry of principles, there is a principle you invent and then you carry that through, whatever happens.« Differences and analogies epitomize the engaged and experimental approach to art that reflects the two artists interest in the development of technology, politics and civil society during the second half of the XX and the early XXI century.