Lucia Marcucci

Lucia Marcucci (b. 1933, Florence, Italy) is one of the leading exponents of Visual Poetry in Italy, known above all for the vital and provocative irony of her verbo-visual compositions, which denounce the commodification of the female image and reveal the contradictions and ambiguities of the mass media. Marcucci was a leading figure in Group 70, with which she participated in exhibitions, festivals, performances, conferences and debates. The group stood out for its vocation for interdisciplinarity, experimentation and verbo-visual research aimed at investigating the possibilities of the relationship between culture and mass media through the codification of a new language.

Group 70 disbanded in 1968; afterwards, Marcucci collaborated in the activities of the Centro Tèchne (founded by Eugenio Miccini in 1969) and joined the International Visual Poetry Group (1971-1973). In 1972, Marucci held her first solo exhibition curated by Renato Barilli at Studio Inquadrature 33 in Florence, with collages and emulsified canvases from the 1960s and 1970s, and took part in the group exhibition ‘Il Libro come luogo di ricerca’ (The Book as a Place of Research) at the XXXVI Venice Biennale. From then on, her research opened up to increasingly autonomous and personal experiences, as in the Impronte series, in which the artist acts directly on the canvas with the imprints of her naked body.

Marcucci’s ideological commitment is testified by her critical contributions to various magazines, including ‘Tèchne’, ‘Arte Oggi’, ‘Il Portico’, ‘Nuova Corrente’ and ‘Lotta Poetica’. Her latest works analyse the mechanisms of communication in the new scenario created by the digital revolution.

Recently, the climate of renewed attention to the artistic practices of the 1960s and 1970s and the reflections on the role of women in art history have seen Marcucci’s participation in numerous Italian and European group exhibitions dedicated to verbo-visual research and the relationship between art and feminism.