Emilio Isgrò in London. Erasure as language

A practice that originates in writing and gradually moves into the visual field is at the core of “Emilio Isgrò: Erasing to Create” at the Estorick Collection in London. The exhibition is structured as a retrospective research project spanning more than six decades, from the 1960s to recent works. Born in Sicily in 1937, Emilio Isgrò began as a poet before turning to visual art. A decisive shift occurs in the mid-1960s, when he starts intervening on encyclopaedias and printed texts, erasing words and allowing fragments of meaning to emerge. This gesture defines his role within visual poetry and conceptual art: erasure not as negation, but as a form of construction. The exhibition follows this trajectory without isolating individual masterpieces. Drawings, books, maps and interventions on different supports reveal a consistent yet evolving practice. The well-known works in which entire pages are obscured, leaving only selected words visible, are presented alongside later pieces where erasure extends to geography, removing place names from maps and globes. The focus is not on the visual effect but on the mechanism. Erasing means intervening in established systems of knowledge, questioning the authority of text, history and geography. In this sense, Isgrò’s work retains a political dimension, tied to language and its structures. The exhibition brings together around forty works, including a piece conceived specifically for the show. Rather than a celebratory survey, it operates as a reading device: erasure as a form of writing and as a way of making visible what usually remains implicit.