Mirella Bentivoglio

Born in Klagenfurt, Austria, to Italian parents, Mirella Bentivoglio (28 March 1922 – 23 March 2017) grew up in Milan. Her linguistic studies in Switzerland and London were interrupted by World War II, and during this period, she used her father’s extensive library as a home-based university.

Unlike most poets, Bentivoglio presents poetry “liberated” from the traditional printed page. The artist played with words, breaks rules of syntax, detaches words from phrases, and isolates letters from words. The results of these experiments—concrete and visual poems—are perceived as symbols and metaphors. She also created unique artists’ books, often made from unusual materials such as marble, wood, metal, and earth, and published limited-edition portfolios. She was a renowned sculptor and performance artist.

She curated many exhibitions of work by women artists in Italy and all over the world, and for the artist’s 90th birthday, the National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Rome organized a retrospective exhibition of her work. [1]

Works

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  L’(assente), positivo/negativo, segno/figura [The Absent One, Positive/Negative, Sign/Figure], 1971. Serigraph on paper, 62.55 x 48.26 cm. (Source).

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  E = congiunzione [And = Conjunction], 1973. Serigraph on paper, 20.96 x 29.85 cm. (Source).

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  Io [Me], 1979. Photo­mech­anical print on paper, 60 x 40 cm. (Source).

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  Moduli a E [E Combinations], 1980. Ink on paper drawings after 1977 wooden constructions, 29.53 x 20.96 cm. (Source).

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  Arti visive. Poesia visiva, 1976.

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  Materializzazione del linguaggio, 1978.

Publications

• Arti visive. Poesia visiva. / Visual Poetry by Women, an International Exhibition in Venice (editor), intro. Franca Zoccoli, Rome: Studio d'Arte Contemporanea, 1976, [27] cards+[3] leaves, 22 x 16 cm. Introduction, Artist list. A gathering of artists’ cards documenting visual and concrete poetry all created by women from Italy, England, Germany, United States, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Canada, and Japan. Organized by Bentivoglio, this multiyear exhibit traveled form city to city throughout Italy (Milan, Savona, Rome, Turin) starting in 1972. Participating artists: Annalisa Alloatti, Mirella Bentivoglio, Irma Blank, Paul Claire, Lia Drei, Ulrike Eberle, Anna Esposito, Amelia Etlinger, Gisela Frankenberg, Ilse Garnier, Bohumila Grögerová, Ana Hatherly, Annalies Klophaus, Liliana Landi, Giulia Niccolai, Anna Oberto, Anezia Pacheco e Chaves, Marguerite Pinney, Betty Radin, Giovanna Sandri, Mira Schendel, Mary Ellen Solt, Chima Sunada, Salette Tavares, Biljana Tomić, Patrizia Vicinelli. [2] (Italian),(English)

• Materializzazione del linguaggio (editor), Biennale di Venezia 1978-Arti visive e architettura, 1978, 55 pp. Catalogue for exh. held 20 Sep-15 Oct 1978 featuring works by 86 women artists. Text by Mirella Bentivoglio, biographies of the exhibiting artists including Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Irma Blank, Mirella Bentivoglio, Lia Dreai, Chiara Diamantini, Elisabetta Gut, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Simona Weller, Carla Vasio, Giulia Niccolai, Paola Levi Montalcini, Maria Lai, Tomaso Binga. [3] (Italian)

• Mirella Bentivoglio: Pages: Selected Works, 1966-2012, ed. & intro. Frances K. Pohl, Claremont, CA: Pomona College Museum of Art, 2015, 152 pp, Excerpt (pp 57-90). This book is the first museum publication in English on Italian artist Mirella Bentivoglio (born 1922). It includes critical essays by art historians Frances K. Pohl, Leslie Cozzi and Franca Zoccoli, interviews with Bentivoglio and John David O'Brien, and a biographical note by Rosaria Abate, plus a bibliography. The book highlights work from the recent exhibition at the Pomona College Museum of Art, which surveyed nearly 50 years of the artist's work as an internationally renowned member of the Concrete and visual poetry movements. Including works in paper, stone, metal, wood, cloth, plastic and Plexiglass and with numerous previously unpublished images, it reveals the ways in which Bentivoglio engaged with many of the most significant formal and theoretical issues of postwar art--for example, the relationship between image and text, the impact of mass media and consumer culture, feminist critiques of patriarchy and artistic interventions in public spaces. Exhibition: Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, USA (20.01-17.05.2015). [4] (English)

• Leslie Cozzi, "Notes on the Index, Continued: Italian Feminism and the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca", Cahiers d’études italiennes 16, 2013, pp 213-234. [5] (English)

Links

• Profile on National Museum of Women in the Arts