Ketty La Rocca

Ketty La Rocca (1938, La Spezia -1976, Florence) was one of the most important representatives of conceptual art in Italy. The work of this artist, who died at a young age, includes visual poetry, fine art, and performance. La Rocca’s experimental and media-critical studies are about language, images, and the stereotypical signs of the everyday world, and seek to expose dominant body politics. In the 1970s, La Rocca developed her performative series featuring hands. In this context, she explicitly refers to female life, which places a limited range of jobs in the hands of women. Ketty La Rocca’s last works included the Riduzioni, whose principle consists in expanding the starting photograph with one or more variations in series, and at the same time to reducing it. This occurs through the schematization of the image that takes place according to certain patterns. Either the artist “draws” the contours of the shapes that seem important to her, or she brings out certain elements using lines and black surfaces, which in turn create a thematic resignification.

Recently her works were shown in London, Düsseldorf, Milan, at the American Academy, Rome (2004), in the gallery Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna, at the Italian Institute of Culture, Los Angeles (2002) as well as in several group shows worldwide.