<i>They Say It Is Love. </i>Social Reproduction and Women’s Art in Postwar Italy

Diplôme Thèse <i>They Say It Is Love. </i>Social Reproduction and Women’s Art in Postwar Italy eng 2026-06-30 2026-06-30 author Paolino Camilla Luisa 848079 Moyens communs Histoire de l'Art et Musicologie (ARMCO) director Zapperi Giovanna 971460 Moyens communs Histoire de l'Art et Musicologie (ARMCO) 493 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:195862 urn:nbn:ch:unige-1958622 L. 1220 The thesis investigates a set of artistic practices that materialized women’s resistance to the imperatives of social reproduction, either by prefiguring, paralleling, or actively participating in the Marxist feminist struggle that unfolded in Italy during the 1970s. It focuses in particular on a constellation of paradigmatic works by artists Carla Accardi, Amalia Del Ponte, Nicole Gravier, Libera Mazzoleni, Marisa Merz, Anna Paci, Clemen Parrocchetti, Lydia Sansoni, and Suzanne Santoro, as well as by the feminist art collectives Gruppo Femminista Immagine di Varese, Le Pezze, and Gruppo del Mercoledì. Operating along parallel and at times intersecting trajectories, these artists and collectives devised diverse artistic strategies aimed at dispelling the foundational myths of modern art—myths that deprived women of creative agency and confined them to submissive roles, thus perpetuating the mechanisms of social reproduction. By appropriating art and mobilizing its capacity to render such mechanisms legible, and therefore transformable, these women emerged from the private sphere not only as creative but also as political subjects, that is, as revolutionary subjects engaged in the subversion of the domestic landscape and of the broader world beyond it. The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the contribution of art to the denaturalization of reproductive labor and to the reconfiguration of the sexual division of labor that has historically structured both the socioeconomic and artistic spheres. Marxist feminism Radical feminism Social reproduction Dissident sexuality Refusal of work Women's art Queer communism Lesbian desire 1960s and 1970s Italian art Dewey 700 91 Département d'histoire de l'art et de musicologie 3I false 98fc9d64-76ef-44ee-8262-f2b87b9fb0c0 Unité d'histoire de l'art f4181f24-dd8c-4b68-a6f5-bd4d95891ded Thesis Public Paolino_PHD-Thesis_2026.pdf 24499545 application/pdf Private 2036-06-30 Volume 1 + Volume 2 6aded0798756558ad555b83f1fec844ae377d6d23b5c26f22e91d7384aa51a06 a86f7cab-5427-453d-8d02-c01f7b9d0a36 Imprimatur Public Imprimatur_PAOLINO.pdf 52652 application/pdf 20f4a63d6f3924677b7573212aed18cd66d8ddd7cb898a6c07c48c7bf47888fe embargoedAccess Faculté des lettres / Département d'histoire de l'art et de musicologie

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They Say It Is Love. Social Reproduction and Women’s Art in Postwar Italy				2026	9	0

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Paolino, Camilla

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