When the trained graphic artist Heinz Gappmayr sat down on the typewriter in the early 1960s to explore the language as a “possibility of art”, it is not yet foreseeable that an Austrian pioneer of visual poetry is at work. However, it has long been announcing internationally that language began as a body, sculpture and concept beyond narrative forms. The fact that the Gappmayr, born in 1925 from Innsbruck, was closely linked to the protagonists of international concept art such as Lawrence Weiner or Robert Barry, but also with representatives of concrete poetry such as Eugen Gomringer, may sound more amazing than the contacts with the Wiener Group, who had been maintained in the early 1960s and the friendships with Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker. Especially since the early international perception of Gappmayrs does not necessarily reflect in the exhibition activities for the round anniversary.
