‘In our culture gestures only underline information, serving as a supportive means of expression ... even though a greater wealth of mystic, ritual and fantastical elements – the legacy of mankind and thus irreplaceable – is also to be found in gestures.’ Ketty La Rocca, 1973
Ketty La Rocca is one of the most important Italian conceptual artists to have emerged from the 1960s. She lived and worked in Florence, initially as a leading member of Gruppo 70, a group of artists devoted to visual poetry and ‘verbal-visual investigations’. Her early collage works were explorations of language in relation to the stereotypical imagery of everyday life with an emphasis on subverting the patriarchal depiction of women in contemporary culture.
Ketty La Rocca (b.1938, La Spezia - d.1976 Florence). Recent exhibitions include: 2020 Dal momento in cui... Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland (2020), Appendice per una supplica, Videoteca GAM, Torino (2019), The Ritual of Gesture, Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2018), Gesture, Speech and Word. Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara, Italy (2018), MAGMA, Instituto Centrale de la Grafica, Rome(2018) 2017 Le Mie Parole, La Virreina Centro de la Imagen, Barcelona (2017). She contributed the video work Appendice per una supplica (Appendix to an Appeal) to the 38th Venice Biennale in 1972 and she is included in many important collections worldwide such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, (Los Angeles, US), Museo D’arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO, Roma, Italy), Centre Pompidou, (Paris, France) and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York, US)

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