Ketty La Rocca and Women Artists of the Italian Neo-avant-garde
Tuesday 11 November 2025, 10.00 – 19.00
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
From her early collaboration with Florence’s Gruppo 70, to her later conceptual art that brought her to the attention of leading international feminist critics and practitioners, Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976) has left behind a body of work that spans genres and media, including collage, performance, photography, video and body art. Yet she does not belong to the canon of the Italian Neoavanguardia, nor is she a well-established figure in the history of Italian art of the postwar era. As Lucy Lippard highlighted in her seminal book From the Centre (1976), during 1960s and 1970s women artists often met with a negative reception because of their perceived “lack of compliance with the evolutionary mainstream” of the art world.
La Rocca’s early experimentation with collage and text, her increasingly complex relationship with language in visual and concrete poetry, and her later groundbreaking use of videotape and feminist action, call for revaluation of her work and, importantly, offer a novel lens through which to rethink the work of postwar Italian art, neo-avant-garde practices, Italian feminist art, and the role of those artists and art forms that operated outside established boundaries.
Organised by Royal Holloway University of London, and the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, this symposium coincides with the first UK museum exhibition dedicated to the artist’s brief yet stimulating career. The papers – presented by established scholars and early career researchers – will take the above themes as starting points, exploring them from a range of different perspectives.
Ticket includes drinks reception and an opportunity to view both the exhibition Ketty La Rocca: You You and the Estorick’s permanent collection.
Full programme TBA
£30 Standard / £25 Estorick Collection Members and Students