Carla Lonzi (

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

, 6 March 1931 –

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, 2 August 1982) was an Italian art critic and feminist activist, who is best known as the cofounder of '' Rivolta Femminile'' (Feminine Revolt), an Italian feminist collective formed in 1970. Lonzi's most significant works include ''Autoritratto'' ("Self-Portrait", 1969); "Writings on Art" (1970); ''Manifesto di Rivolta femminile'' ("Manifesto of the Feminine Revolt", 1970); ''Sputiamo su Hegel, La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritti'' ("Let’s Spit on Hegel, The Clitoridian Woman and the Vaginal Woman, and Other Writings", 1974); and "Diary of a Feminist" (1977).

Personal life

Carla Lonzi was born in Florence, Italy, on 6 March 1931 to a middle-class family. Her father owned a small industrial company and her mother dedicated her life to the nurture and education of Lonzi and her four siblings. Her sister Marta Lonzi (1938-2008), an architect, was also a feminist activist. In her early twenties, Lonzi became greatly interested in film and theatre, both as a spectator and creator. This lead her to performance art, a practice she liked for its ability to stage real life experiences and revealing truths. Lonzi did her final dissertation on theatre and graduated from the University of Florence. Later in her career, the lessons she learned from film and the theatre continued to influence her work. In 1955 Lonzi married Mario Lena. In 1960, she gave birth to their son, Battista Lena. Lonzi found married life straining. She and Lena separated in 1963. The following year, in 1964, Lonzi began her relationship with

Pietro Consagra Pietro Consagra (6 October 1920 – 16 July 2005) was an Italian sculptor. In 1947 he was among the founding members of the Forma 1 group of artists, who advocated both Marxism and structured abstraction. Life Consagra was born on 6 Oc ...

, an Italian sculptor. Lonzi and Consagra never married. Their relationship ended in 1969, following the publication of Lonzi's ''Autorittrato''.

Art criticism

Lonzi began her career as an art critic in the late 1950s. In 1966 she authored a monograph on the work of Surrealist painter

Henri Rousseau Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Lucio Fontana,

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, Luciano Fabro,

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, Carla Accardi (the only female artist),

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, Mario Nigro, Salvatore Scarpitta,

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and

. Lonzi's art criticism went largely unnoticed and was barely mentioned within academic circles. There are several proposed explanations for this, including that Lonzi's art historical work was widely interpreted as an extension of her work as a feminist activist and that it did not adopt the traditional approach to the promotion of Italian art used in the 1970s and 80s. Scholars have described ''Autorittrato'' as Lonzi's farewell to the art world. Although she viewed art as incompatible with the objectives of radical feminism, she continued writing about art or "creativity as a mode of self-emancipation." Lonzi's following book, ''Writings on Art'' is a diaristic text written between 1955 and 1970. Because it spans over a 15-year period, its ideas are in constant evolution. Most of the ideas expressed in the book are gathered from information collected from periodicals, exhibition catalogues, conference papers, and newspaper essays.

Feminist activism

Turn to activism

In the early 1970s, Lonzi adopted a feminist stance in relation to art. She had grown to view art as being yet another part of a system of institutions and labour which enable unequal power relations and the overall oppression of women. Lonzi became disillusioned and went as far as dismissing art criticism as a "phoney profession". She subsequently abandoned her career as an art critic and fully embraced the feminist cause. Despite her eventual negative outlook on the field of art and art criticism, Lonzi has said that the experience and knowledge she gained from her work as art critic informed her feminist activism.

Rivolta Femminile

In 1970 Lonzi, Carla Accardi, and Elvira Banotti founded Rivolta Femminile, an Italian feminist collective. Their first action, in July 1970, consisted of plastering the walls of Rome with copies of the "Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile". The politics of Rivolta Femminile were largely grounded in "autocoscienza" theory and practices. "Autocoscienza", meaning a heightened sense of self-consciousness or self-awareness, was a collective exercise of feminist "consciousness-raising." Its core belief was that women can better understand themselves through being engaged in an open dialogue with other women. Rivolta Femminile developed its own publishing house, Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, which allowed the group to print and distribute its own work. This was important to Lonzi who had a particular interest in writing and publishing.

Writing

Lonzi was the author of some of Italian Feminism's most important documents. Her numerous provocative texts and manifestos pushed the boundaries of the traditional understanding of conversationalism and the manifesto format. This was accomplished through continuous experimentation with writing and knowledge production. Some of Lonzi's most notable works from this period include "The Clitoral and the Vaginal Woman", "Let’s spit on Hegel", and "Diary of a Feminist". Lonzi's Diary of a Feminist is a series of diary entries written between 1972 and 1977. The Diary largely chronicles Lonzi's social experiments with relationships, as well as an exploration of female sexuality and a pursuit of truth
We Are All Clitoridian Women: Notes on Carla Lonzi’s Legacy - Journal #47 September 2013 - e-flux
It makes reference to many important people in Lonzi's life, although they are referred to using fictitious names. Some of these individuals include Accardi, Consagra, and her sister Marta Lonzi, who was also a member of the Rivolta Femminile. In addition, there exist many contradictions between the early and late years of the diary. For example, in the first sections of the work Lonzi seems to be principally concerned with the collective of women, which corresponds with the concept of "autocoscienza", whereas in the later sections she largely focuses on her relationship with Consagra. ''Let’s Spit on Hegel'' (1970) is considered one of the seminal texts of Italian feminism. It questioned women's claim for equality by stressing the patriarchal character of Hegel's dialectic and ‘theory of recognition’. It was published in 1970 and deconstructs what Lonzi argues as the patriarchal nature of Hegel's theories. The book was initially serialised between 1970 and 1972 and then collected in a unique volume in 1974. Each section reveals one stage of Lonzi’s personal consciousness raising. In ''The Clitoridian Woman and the Vaginal Woman'' (1971), through the analysis of Freud and

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’ paleoanthropology and the

Kama Sutra The ''Kama Sutra'' (; sa, कामसूत्र, , ; ) is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the ''Kama Sutra'' is neither exclusively nor predominantly ...

, Lonzi claims that the myth of the vaginal orgasm serves the patriarchal model of the complementarity of women to men. If this complementarity between man and woman is permitted during procreation, it is not allowed during sexuality. Published at a time when women's sexuality and self-liberation were at the forefront of feminist discussion, the book significantly contributed to these debates.

Death

Lonzi died on 2 August 1982, in

, at the age of 51.

References

External links

* Claire Fontaine, "We Are All Clitoridian Women: Notes on Carla Lonzi’s Legacy" * Margrit Brückner, "On Carla Lonzi: The victory of the clitoris over the vagina as an act of women’s liberation" {{DEFAULTSORT:Lonzi, Carla 1931 births 1982 deaths Italian feminists Italian art critics Italian women art critics Italian art historians Italian women historians 20th-century Italian women writers Writers from Florence