Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi

(Paperback)

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A renowned art critic of the 1960s, Carla Lonzi abandoned the art world in 1970 to found Rivolta Femminile, a pioneering feminist collective in Italy. Rather than separating the art world luminary from the activist, however, this book looks at the two together. It demonstrates that even as Lonzi refused art, she articulated how feminist spaces and communities drew strength from creativity. The eleven essays in this book document the artistic and feminist circles of postwar Italy, a time characterised both by radical protest and avant-garde aesthetics, using primary and archival sources never before translated into English. They map Lonzis deep connections to the influential Italian Arte Povera movement, and explore her complicated relationship with female artists of the time, such as Carla Accardi and Suzanne Santoro. Carla Lonzis written work and activism represents a crucial, but previously overlooked, feminist intervention in traditional art history from beyond the Anglo-American canon. This book is a timely and urgent addition to our understanding of radical politics, separatist feminism and art criticism in the postwar period.

Reviews

In taking a kaleidoscopic stance on the founding figure and central stakes of Italian separatist feminism, while addressing a broader English-speaking readership, Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi is not only an impressive but also a timely editorial and research achievement. * Third Text *
This eagerly anticipated volume offers prismatic perspectives on the work of Carla Lonzi, whose legacy as a writer and an activist could not be more relevant. These deeply researched and personally motivated essays deliver a thrilling contribution to feminist art history. * Julia Bryan-Wilson, Doris and Clarence Malo Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA *
For too long excluded from accounts of second-wave feminism, Carla Lonzis challenging writing and radical collective practice receive eloquent reappraisal in this important collection. Driven by the search for womens autonomy and mutual recognition, Lonzi attempted to withdraw from oppressive patriarchal culturea project that has profound contemporary resonance. * Helena Reckitt, Reader in Curating, Department of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *
Carla Lonzi is little known in the anglophone world, her writing little translated, and her revolutionary feminist praxis overlooked. Here, artists and writers explore aspects of her thought, her activity, and her impact. Fifty years after she quit the art world, and facing renewed crises in cultural, sexual, class, and racial politics, we have much to learn still from her strategies of refusal and assent, kinship and difference. * Hilary Robinson, Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory, Loughborough University, UK *

Author Bio

Francesco Ventrella is Lecturer in Art History at the University of Sussex, UK. He is the co-editor with Meaghan Clarke of Women and the Culture of Connoisseurship, a special issue of Visual Resources (2017). Giovanna Zapperi is Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Tours, France. She is the author of the award-winning study Lartiste est une femme: La modernit de Marcel Duchamp(2012) and of Carla Lonzi: Unarte della vita (2017).