ABOUT

Since 1998 Opiemme is looking for new ways of presenting poetry. The artists’ poetics is known to get in touch the visual art world with the one of literature, with references to visual poetry and street poetry actions. In 2013 The Huff Post underlined how the artist is about plumbing the fine lines between public art, street art, and the written word to bring poetry out into the open.
Opiemme has been defined as “poet of street art”, for public art interventions, installations, calligrams and collective performances used for bringing verses in the street. Poetry becomes a medium for painting new images, and images become words for writing new poetry.

Beginning his quest before 2000.

The Huffington Post, Brooklyn Street Art, on the project “A Journey through painting and poetry“:
“For decades graffiti writers have been checking out one anothers’ bonafides with this question. Even as tags turned to large complex pieces, evermore stylized through means of exaggeration or obfuscation, text has always stayed as a fundamental building block for graffiti writers. Italian fine artist and street artist Opiemme took a variety of routes to employ the text-based art on the street this summer with its “journey through painting and poetry,” a project inspired by poets he loves.
Breaking apart, recombining, stretching and spreading the written letterform, the public poetic paintings were conceived to be site-specific and included walls and pavement installations across Italy from north to south […]”

PUBLICATIONS

Edoardo Di Mauro, Paola Russo (2020), Una dimensione etica: storia e presente dell’arte pubblica, Prinp
Daniele Tozzi (2017), Words into shapes – The graphic art of calligram, Monsa Publications
Elena Paloscia (2016), Vortex, Matlisko (Ravenna edition’s catalog)
Francesco Scopellitti (2016), La via dell’agave, Matlisko (cover)
Nicholas Ganz (2015), Street messages, Dokument Press Distribution
Luca Beatrice (2015), Imago Mundi Praestigium Italia I Contemporary artist from Italy, Fabrica
Clara Isabel Martínez Cantón (2014), Cuestiones Métricas. La Rima y el Estribillo, Punto Rojo Libros S.L.
Elena Cornacchione (2013), Parole che si fanno strada,La Caravella Editrice
Luca Beatrice (2011), Km 011. Arti a Torino. 1995-2011, Allemandi