Ugo Carrega

Ugo Carrega (17 August 1935 – 7 October 2014) was an Italian artist and poet. Carrega was one of the main exponents of visual poetry, although he preferred the term "New Writing", an experimental form of writing that combines signs of different extraction. Carrega was active mainly in Milan, where he founded the cultural centers Centro Suolo (1969), Centro Tool (1971), Mercato del Sale (1974) and Euforia Costante (1993). He also founded and directed the art magazines Tool (1965), Bollettino Tool (1968), aaa (1969) and Bollettino da dentro (1972). Ugo Carrega was born in Genoa, in the Pegli neighborhood, on 17 August 1935. His father was Lelio Carrega, naval officer, and his mother was Maria Teresa Repetti, housewife. Carrega studied at the religious high school managed by the Piarists in Cornigliano, and then in a few private schools, without achieving a diploma. In 1955, he was pushed by his parents to travel to London to learn the profession of shipping agent, and there he became proficient in the English language. The following year he returned to Italy and worked as a shipping agent, then since 1963 as a translator for various publishers. Since he was a child he wrote poems, and in 1952 he collected them under the title Verde la casa (Green the House). The second collection, from 1955, is titled Per il cielo di Fiandra (For the Sky of Flander). Initially Carrega's poetry was inspired by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Dino Campana, Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi and Camillo Sbarbaro, but after discovering James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings he started experimenting with new linguistic forms based on the broadening of the semantic extension of the word. In 1958, Carrega started working with Martino Oberto, and it was through this collaboration that he began his activity as a verbo-visual artist. In 1963, he became editor of the magazine Ana eccetera, directed by Martino Oberto and his wife Anna Bontempi. In 1965, he published in the magazine the article Analisi grafica del linguaggio.