Ultraist movement

An early 20th-century Spanish-language literary avant-garde that favored concise imagery, metaphor, and formal experimentation over traditional poetic conventions.

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Ultraísmo: A Spanish-language avant-garde movement that pursued radical literary renewal through condensed images and formal innovation. This Spanish name identifies the movement and its program.
Cansinos Assens: A Spanish writer and critic associated with the beginnings of Ultraism in Madrid. His literary circle helped introduce and organize Ultraist ideas in Spain.
Jorge Luis Borges: An Argentine writer whose early poetry and criticism engaged with Spanish-language avant-garde movements. Borges encountered Ultraism in Spain and helped transmit it to Argentina.
Ultraist poetry: Poetry associated with Ultraism, marked by compressed imagery, metaphor, and experimental presentation. Individual poems show how the movement’s program worked in practice.
Spanish American avant-garde: A network of early 20th-century Spanish-language movements that challenged inherited literary forms. Ultraism became one strand in this broader transatlantic transformation.
Metaphor: A figure of speech that describes one thing through another, transferring qualities between them. Ultraists treated metaphor as a poem’s central engine rather than ornament.
Horizon carré: A 1917 poetry collection by Vicente Huidobro that experiments with visual form and image-making. Huidobro’s work offered a nearby model for the movement’s formal audacity.
Guillermo de Torre: A Spanish poet, critic, and historian of the avant-garde who participated in Ultraism. His essays and later histories documented Ultraism’s principles and participants.
Grecia (magazine): A Spanish literary magazine published from 1918 to 1920 that became a platform for Ultraist writing. Its pages published manifestos, poems, and debates central to the movement.
Hispanic modernism: A broad period of renewal in Spanish-language literature spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ultraism extended modernist experimentation toward a more radical avant-garde.