Transmuting matter and Silence: The sculpture of Zulmiro de Carvalho traversed by the words of Herberto Helder

Abstract

This article examines the conceptual, formal, and phenomenological convergences between Herberto Hélder’s poetics, the evolution of modern sculpture—from Rodin, through Minimalism and Concrete Art—and the sculptural oeuvre of Zulmiro de Carvalho. Drawing on selected texts from Photomaton & Vox (1979), it discusses notions such as “sculpture-object,” “creation of space,” “transmutation,” “silence,” and “line,” and connects them to historical and aesthetic transformations in contemporary three-dimensionality. The analysis includes critical readings of Hélder’s texts, proposing that Zulmiro de Carvalho’s work offers an exemplary embodiment of Hélder’s definition of sculpture as a motor-text—a spatial, relational, and sensorial operative system.