Collectable

He Spoke Like an Axe 

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s free language

Poet, gardener and sculptor, Ian Hamilton Finlay always created with extreme freedom. Considered one of the pioneers of visual or concrete poetry, he tirelessly explored the creative possibilities of language, as evidenced by his messages, which he printed on all kinds of supports and in all formats, from stone steles to pyramids, ceramic jars and fabrics. In his hands, words are built in a constant game of subtleties, ironies and semantic folds, with inverted poems, mischievous messages, puns, numerical routes, ironies, political incorrectness, phonetic clues, phrases that roll like waves, and multiple winks to literary and political tradition. We invite you to discover the poetic route traced by Hamilton Finlay’s postcards from the MACBA Collection. You will find them in Poetic Intention, the exhibition of the Collection. Produced throughout the eighties, they reflect the desire to communicate and the belief that, as we read in one of the postcards, words can become an axe. 

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Exhibition

‘MACBA Collection: Prelude. Poetic Intention’. A group exhibition that aims to reverse the dramaturgy of the museum by putting the artwork at the centre so we can address its will, its energy and its poetic intention.

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