This research paper presents an analysis of visual poems of the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín, emphasizing their heterogeneity and graphic form as the elements that enable the meaning of the text. The investigation is based on four cycles of poems that belong to different phases of the artistic path of the author: “Signografías y textos” (1967 – 1972), “Signo” (1974), “Homenaje al cuadrado” (1999) and “Sonetario” (2000), where the manipulation of the linguistic system is performed as a theoretical and political proposal. The construction of the meaning in visual poems is analyzed through the lenses of structuralism and semiotics.