On the occasion of the 90th birthday of Lucia Marcucci, a leading representative of visual poetry in Italy, the Museion Passage is presenting the exhibition "Poesie e no". Works by the artist are part of the collection of the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura, which Paolo della Grazia donated to Museion and the Museum Mart in 2020. The Museion Passage is a space for the presentation of works from the collection that is accessible free of charge and aims to strengthen the connection to the region.
The exhibition highlights Marcucci's artistic research and experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s through her works as well as numerous theoretical and poetic writings. The works come from the Mart, the artist's private archive and the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura, which is part of the museum's collection. The focus on Lucia Marcucci is part of Museion's ongoing research into the artists in its collection: This also includes demonstrating the contemporary relevance of her works and the various artistic and interdisciplinary connections established by them.
Marcucci's works tell of post-war Italy, of a society characterized by economic recovery, social and political reorganization and, towards the end of the 1960s, by student protests and the rise of feminist movements. In this climate, many artists found unconventional forms of expression using new techniques and established innovative forms of interdisciplinarity, which are also reflected in Marcucci's works.
Lucia Marcucci © Museion Bolzano
The title of the exhibition - Poesie e no - goes back to a performance of poems by Lamberto Pignotti and Eugenio Miccini, which first took place in 1963 at the invitation of Lucia Marcucci and directed by Enrico Sirello. The happening was repeated several times in the years that followed. Its title - like that of the current exhibition - is intended to make it clear that Marcucci's artistic practice is always determined by the encounter between "high" and "low" culture, between literary language and that of everyday life mediated by the mass media. The tragic-ironic juxtaposition of text and image, painting and collage derives from this impetus.
The image and sound collages in this first performance of Poesie e no thus appear as an homage to the Dadaist-Futurist tradition and its exploration of language by Gruppo '70 - an artists' collective founded in Florence of which Lucia Marcucci was a member - and at the same time as an expression of the artist's own non-linear approach.
The exploration of the written word in its various forms takes its starting point in a critical, protest-like attitude that is sometimes emphatically militant, but always ironic and free. These characteristics also inspired the exhibition design by the Bruno graphic design studio from Venice.
The works by Marcucci on display at Piccolo Museion - Cubo Garutti, on the other hand, belong to a more recent phase of his work. They show iconic images from art history, such as Botticelli's Venus or Leonardo's Mona Lisa, printed on large canvases and enhanced by painterly interventions that play with their appropriation by mass culture.
May 6 to September 3, 2023
