Guillermo Deisler was a stage designer, visual poet

Visual poetry

Visual poetry is poetry or art in which the visual arrangement of text, images and symbols is important in conveying the intended effect of the work. It is sometimes referred to as concrete poetry, a term that predates visual poetry, and at one time was synonymous with it.Visual poetry was heavily...

 and mail art

Mail art

Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

ist. In his country of birth, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, as well as during his long and difficult exile (since 1986 in the German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

) his rich and imaginative work constituted the centre of his life.

Life

Deisler was born in Santiago

Santiago, Chile

Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

, Chile as the son of a family that had immigrated around 1900 from Prussia. He studied art and became, in 1967, a teacher of graphic art at the University of Chile in Antofagasta. When Pinochet came to power, he (like many of his colleagues) was arrested and sacked. With the help of friends, he was able to leave prison and go into exile in Europe. After staying in France for a year, he volunteered to work in the German Democratic Republic. From there, however, he was sent on to Bulgaria, where he and his family stayed for almost 12 years. In 1986, he was allowed to return to the German Democratic Republic, where he worked until his death as a stage designer at the provincial theatre in Halle (Saale)

Halle, Saxony-Anhalt

Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...

.

Work

Deisler has produced a large body of visual poetry and contributed to the movement of mail art. But most of this work, exhibited and published in the different countries of his exile, is little known and remains to be rediscovered. He is largely remembered as a promotor of his fellow artists. As early as 1963 to 1973 he published mimbre (willow rod), a periodical of graphic arts and visual poetry, presenting the avantgarde of Latin American artists. In 1987, he started a similar project, this time of an international scope: the Peacedream project UNI/vers, publishing original mail art works from artists like Hans Braumüller, Theo Breuer

Theo Breuer

Theo Breuer is a German poet, essayist, editor, translator and publisher.-Life and work:...

, David Chikladze (Georgia), Pedro-Juan Gutierrez (Cuba), Joseph Huber (Germany), César Figueiredo (Portugal), K. Takeishi-Tateno (Japan), Spencer Selby (USA) and many others. In 1990, just after the unification of Germany, he edited (together with the designer Jörg Kowalski) the anthology wortBILD (wordPICTURE), documenting avantguard visual poetry in the now defunct German Democratic Republic.

Today his collection of more than 5,000 works of mail art is preserved in the archives of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin.

Selected exhibitions

• 1964 Galeria Vanguadia, Santiago de Chile
• 1967 Galeria Kraft, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 1970 Casa de Cultura, Ministerio de Educación, Santiago de Chile
• 1971 Galeria U, Montevideo, Uruguay
• 1979 Gráficas, Viejo Plovdiv, Bulgaria
• 1983 Sociedad de Escritores de Chile, Santiago de Chile
• 1987 Galerie des Kulturbundes, Hainichen, Alemania
• 1990 Galerie Gallus, Franfurt/Oder, Alemania
• 1991 Galerie Sophienstrasse, Berlin
• 1991 Marché de la Poesie, Paris, France
• 1992 Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt/Main, Alemania
• 1993 Kunsthalle, Kühlungsborn, Alemania
• 1994 Kunsttrienale, Frankfurt/Main, Alemania
• 1996 Sala Juan Egenau, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile
• 1997 Centre Internationale de Poesie, Marseille, Francia
• 1999 Museo Kitami, Japon
• 2002 Casa Cultura Mexicana, Viejo Plovdiv, Bulgaria
• 2004 Galeria Stelzer und zaglmeier, Halle, Alemania
• 2006 Sala Extensión Cultural, Universidad de Talca, Chile.
• 2007 Sala Puntángeles, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile. "Exclusivo hecho para usted" curatoría de Francisca García B.
• 2008 Sala Juan Egenau, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile. "Poetry Factory" curatoría Francisca García B. y gestión de Verónica Troncoso

External links

• Mail Artists Index (in German)
• Guillermo Deisler´s UNI/vers