Ketty la rocca biography of christopher

She was a leading exponent of body art and visual poetry movements. The art of La Rocca comprises visual poetry, visual art, and performance. She explored language, images, and scenes of the everyday world.

Ketty la rocca biography of christopher

She emphasized the imagery of bodies. Beginning in the s she mounted an extensive study of the human hand. She examined their potential for expression. She combined hands and words. She desired to create a different language, a more visceral communion in which the physical body, gestures and the written word were intertwined. They have a lot to do and then they only have one language at their disposal, which is alien and inimical to them.

They are robbed of everything, except of the things that no one notices and those are manifold, even if they must be arranged. Hands, for instance, too slow for female skills, too poor and too incapable of continuing to hoard. It is better to embroider with words Near the end of her career La Rocca worked in "Riduzioni" reductions , in which she transforms a common photograph, such as a family or individual portrait, into something more graphic.

She alters the picture using graphic contouring of the image or by other distortions, often involving written words. La Rocca debuted in the early s as a poet, and eventually combined her poetic sense with the visual sense. Beside the experience with concrete poetry , she produced, in line with the visual poetry of Gruppo 70, to which she belonged, her collages, a set of images and words taken from newspapers and magazines and recombined in critical forms.

Starting from the late s and early s, she examined the universe of communication , using innovations including videotapes, installation and performance. During this time she created several works in black PVC plastic, often reproducing single letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks mainly the comma , and various objects in metal and mirror.

After that time La Rocca developed the idea of a body-language, or of a body turned into language. Meaning unfolded on several levels for La Rocca: She called for more social honesty, pointed out the fascist heritage of her homeland, criticized consumer society, and encouraged women to speak. Socio-political was her relationship to language and the means of communication available to her.

One of La Rocca's last groups of works is the »riduzioni. She aimed to serially complete the images through variations. She always emphasized exactly those elements she considered important - sometimes two-dimensionally, sometimes by the mere line. She also outlined some of them with writing. Her I and J sculptures, which represented the speaking individual, also emerged from the »semiotic phase.

At the height of her career, she represented her native Italy twice at the Venice Biennale: in and , when she was already no longer alive. La Rocca died of a brain tumor in Florence in at the age of Sprache, Schweigen, Zeichen verarbeitete sie in verschiedenen Medien. Neue Sprach- und Bildvarianten sollten durch ihre »poesia visiva« entstehen.

Die Bedeutung entfaltete sich bei La Rocca auf mehreren Ebenen: Sie forderte mehr soziale Aufrichtigkeit ein, wies auf das faschistische Erbe ihres Heimatlandes hin, kritisierte die Konsumgesellschaft und regte Frauen zum Sprechen an. Eine von La Roccas letzten Werkgruppen sind die »riduzioni«. Sie reduzierte Fotografien, indem sie sie grafisch schematisierte.

Einige davon umriss sie zudem mit Schrift. These sculptures present the individual. The letters stand for »I« in English and French. They deal with the themes of identity and differentiation from others. In terms of content, they are related to La Rocca's photographs of hands, which also address interpersonal relationships and their tensions.

Most of La Rocca's presentations have been in Italy, her home country. Salon Artists Ketty La Rocca 4 auction results in 3 auctions. Jun May Sothebys, Milan. Christies, Milan. Her style catches the eye through its use of black and white, parody, and clashing visuals, writing, and contexts, as does her provocative and dissenting way of using gestures, objects, and bodies to express and uncover, among other things, the unsatisfying condition of women and the myths — made up by consumer society and the media — that surround it.

Ketty La Rocca, Intellettuali in collegio [intellectuals in college], , collage on paper, private collection. Ketty La Rocca, Ho spiato i mostri [I spied the monsters], , collage on paper, Ketty La Rocca, Elettro… adomesticati [electro… domesticated], , collage on paper, private collection. Ketty La Rocca, Autoritratto [self-portrait], , mixed media, two parts overlapped, handwriting on plexiglas, photo, 30 x 24 cm, private collection.

Watch and Listen. Villa Vassilieff.