Jean Francois Bory Biography
Jean-Francois Bory was born in Paris in 1938 and still lives and works in the French capital. He is considered one of the main representatives of French visual poetry. He began his research in the scriptural field, and then explored the experimentation of the visual verb. He held his first exhibitions in this field in Paris in 1965 and was simultaneously interested in sound poetry, participating in numerous festivals, including Aktion und Saben, at the Kunsthalle in Bern in 1967. Bory began working on artists' books in mid-1967. of the 60s and much of his production is concentrated in this area. He collaborates with experimental publishing houses in different countries, such as France, Italy and the United States. His books are characterized by a careful graphic, compositional and layout study, often created in black and white. Parallel to his activity as an artist, Bory is also a critic and an intellectual. He founded and directed numerous magazines, including "Approches" in 1966, focused on experimental poetic research at an international level; the "Agentzia" anthology magazine series in 1968, published with Jochen Gerz; “Once Again” in New York; and the Italian anthology in French "L'Humiditè" in 1970. In the 1970s, Jean-Francois Bory entered into collaborative relationships with numerous exponents of research between word and image, including the International Group of Visual Poetry (also called Group of Nine) with the Italians Eugenio Miccini, Lucia Marcucci, Luciano Ori, Michele Perfetti, Sarenco, the Dutch Herman Damen and the Belgians Alain Arias-Misson and Paul De Vree.
Jean-Francois Bory is also the author of critical and literary works, such as the translation of two cantos from Galaxies by Haroldo de Campos and his books on Hausmann, Nadar and the drawings of Victor Hugo.
