ISGRÒ Emilio

Erasing a word does not necessarily mean destroying it. It can mean making its absence more evident, forcing the reader to question what they can no longer see, and turning a page into a space for interpretation. Much of the work of Emilio Isgrò, born in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto in 1937 and one of the leading Italian exponents of conceptual art and visual poetry, is based on this paradox. His best-known practice, erasure, calls into question the relationship between writing, image, memory, and cultural authority, using an apparently simple gesture to raise highly complex questions.

From poetry to the page as visual space

Isgrò's path began with a direct relationship with literature. A poet and writer before becoming a visual artist, he has always regarded language as a living material, capable of producing meaning but also of imposing hierarchies and forms of control. In the 1960s, in a cultural context that was challenging the traditional boundaries between the arts, he moved toward visual poetry and began treating the page not merely as a text's support, but as a surface to be physically intervened upon. The arrangement of words, the white spaces, and the obscured areas thus became elements of a composition without losing their connection to reading.

This transformation is important because it shifts attention from the content of a sentence to the way that content is conveyed. A book, newspaper, or document is not a neutral container of information: it has authority, a recognizable form, and a history. Intervening on it means making visible the conventions that normally allow readers to trust what they find written. Isgrò does not give up on words, but puts them to the test: he partially hides them to show how much our experience of a text also depends on what is missing.

Erasure between memory and interpretation

In Isgrò’s artworks, erasure is not indiscriminate obscuring. L’artista selects, covers, leaves fragments intact, and creates relationships between positive and negative space. The reader continues to recognize the presence of a text, but can no longer engage with it in the usual way. L’absence then becomes an active force: it invites us to imagine connections, question the source, and reflect on who has the power to decide which words should remain visible. The gesture may evoke censorship, but it is not limited to that, because the act of removal also generates new possibilities of meaning.

Among the best-known interventions in his practice is the erasure of the first volume of the Treccani Encyclopedia, created in 1970. The choice to work on an encyclopedia is particularly significant: a work created to organize and transmit knowledge is transformed into an image that calls its presumed completeness into question. Viewers recognize the source’s authority, but are confronted with a page that can no longer function as a simple reference tool. This contrast between knowledge and the impossibility of reading lies at the heart of one of the most original aspects of Isgrò’s art.

From Erasures to Installations

Over the decades, Isgrò has expanded his practice to include painting, installations, public artworks, and theater projects, while continuing to work with texts and symbols from Italian and international culture. Erasure, born from his engagement with the page, can take on environmental dimensions and alter the way viewers move through a space. In other cases, it remains focused on a tiny detail, allowing a word or mark to emerge with particular intensity precisely because it is surrounded by silence. The media and proportions change, but his interest in the boundary between what is shown and what is kept from view remains constant.

In parallel, the artist continued to write poetry, prose, and plays. This dual activity is essential to understanding his work: Isgrò does not set literature against the image, but makes each language question the other. Writing provides materials and structures for the visual work; the artistic intervention, in turn, makes the apparent transparency of writing less self-evident. The result is a practice that cannot be confined to a single discipline.

Unique works, editions, and graphic art

In Isgrò's production, the conceptual process does not automatically determine a material technique. Erasures can be made on different supports, while other artworks belong to the field of graphic art and artist's multiples. For this reason, it is important not to identify every work as a screenprint, lithograph, or print merely because it features a reproducible image. When describing an individual work, it is necessary to distinguish the artistic project from the process actually used and, where available, verify publication data, edition size, signature, and documentation.

L's legacy consists in having transformed reading into a visual and critical experience. His artworks ask the viewer to observe not only what a page communicates, but also the conditions that make that communication possible. In this sense, erasure is not the opposite of writing: it is another way of making the text speak, through interruption, emptiness, and the memory of what we can no longer read.