Ferreira Gullar

Origin

São Luís, MA

Years active

1950–2016

Genres

poetry, literature

Biography

Ferreira Gullar, artistic name of José Ribamar Ferreira, was born in São Luís, Maranhão, on September 10, 1930. Recognized as one of the greatest poets of the second half of the 20th century in Brazil, he began his literary trajectory in Maranhão alongside names like Bandeira Tribuzi, integrating the post-modernist movement of the magazine A Ilha. Moving to Rio de Janeiro, he stood out on the national cultural scene by publishing A Luta Corporal in 1954, a fundamental work of experimental poetry that explored the graphic design of the verses and brought him close to concretism.

In 1959, he broke with orthodox concretism and founded, alongside visual artists such as Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, the neo-concrete movement, drafting the Neo-Concrete Manifesto and defending subjectivity and living experience in art. In the following decades, with his adherence to communism and the subsequent persecution by the military dictatorship, Gullar directed his poetry toward social and political themes, producing verses of strong lyrical and popular appeal, in addition to conceiving in exile his magnum opus, Poema Sujo. Throughout his career, he intensely engaged with the country's intellectual production, having his literary and lyrical work associated with major names in national culture, such as João Cabral de Melo Neto.

Returning to Brazil starting in 1977, he continued his intense activity as an essayist, columnist, and poet, being nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 and elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2014 to chair number 37. Ferreira Gullar passed away in Rio de Janeiro on December 4, 2016, a victim of respiratory problems and pneumonia, leaving an undying legacy in Brazilian poetry and literature.