Carla Lonzi (Florence, 1931 – Milan, 1982) is an art critic, a writer and a radical feminist. She is born in 1931 in a bourgeois family that she leaves at the age of nine to attending boarding school. She graduates in literature and she publishes a revolutionary critic art work – Self-Portrait. In 1970 she creates, with Carla Accardi and Elvira Banotti, Rivolta femminile, a feminist group based on self-awareness (autocoscienza). Rivolta femminile is also the name of the feminist Manifesto appeared in 1970 on the walls of Rome and the name of Lonzi’s publishing house. In her writings (namely, in Let’s Spit on Hegel), Lonzi critiques the Western stadial view of history; in opposition she proposes the concepts of creation and unproductivity. Woman is, in her view, a sort of unexpected subject.
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Primary Sources
Lonzi, Carla 1959. Quadri, films e balletti astratti, in L’ approdo letterario: rivista trimestrale di lettere e arti, aprile-giugno, 119-120.
Lonzi, Carla 1960. Dipinti di Riopelle, Torino: Notizie.
Lonzi, Carla 1961. Opere scelte di Picasso Klee Matisse Jawlensky Nolde Bram velde MiròGorky Sam francis De Staël Tal Coat Fautrier Wols Riopelle Soulages Hartung Fontana Tobey Jorn Kline Mathieu Gallizio Micahux, Torino: Notizie Associazione arti figurative.
Lonzi, Carla 1961. Bram Van Velde: 25 opere dal 1922 al 1960, Torino: Notizie.
Lonzi, Carla 1961. Opere scelte di artisti americani, Torino: Notizie Associazione arti figurative.
Lonzi, Carla 1962. Bluhm, Gallizio, Onishi, Shiraga, Tapies, Twombly, Alba: Academia Filarmonica Letteraria, 14 aprile – 10 maggio.
Lonzi, Carla 1962. Sculture di Nevelson, dipinti di Twombly, Torino: Notizie.
Lonzi, Carla 1962. Henri Michaux, Torino: Notizie.
Lonzi, Carla 1963. Dipinti di Cy Twombly, Torino: Associazione Arti Figurative.
Lonzi, Carla 1963, La solitudine del critico, in L’Avanti!, 13 dicembre, 3.
Lonzi, Carla 1966. Giulio Paolini, Milano: Galleria dell’Ariete.
Lonzi, Carla 1966. Henri Rousseau, Milano: Fabbri.
Lonzi, Carla 1966. Georges Seurat, Milano: Fabbri.
Lonzi, Carla 1968, Mario Nigro, Fossati, Paolo (ed.), Milano: V. Scheiwiller.
Lonzi, Carla et al. 1968. Tecniche e materiali, in Marcatré, n. 37-40, 165-185.
Lonzi, Carla, Nigro Mario 1970. M. Nigro, Milano: Galleria dell’Ariete.
Lonzi, Carla et al. 1977. È già politica, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.
Lonzi, Carla 1978. Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.
Lonzi, Carla et. al. 1978. La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta femminile.
Lonzi, Carla 1979. Altro che riflusso! Il tifone femminista soffia da secoli, in Quotidiano donna, 30 settembre.
Lonzi, Carla 1980. Vai pure, Dialogo con Pietro Consagra, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.
Lonzi Carla 1981. Con il problema dell’uomo alle spalle, in Quotidiano donna, 15 maggio.
Lonzi Carla 1985. Scacco ragionato. Poesie dal ’58 al ’63, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.
Lonzi Carla 1992. Armande sono io!, Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.
Lonzi, Carla 1995. Rapporto tra la scena e le arti figurative dalla fine dell’Ottocento, Firenze: Olschki.
Lonzi, Carla 2012. Scritti sull’arte, Milano: Et. al.
Lonzi, Carla 2017. Autoritratto, Milano: Abscondita. [Self-Portrait, translated by Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Brussels, London: Divided Publishing, 2021]
Lonzi, Carla 2023. Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: La Tartaruga. [Let’s Spit on Hegel, translated by Veronica Newman, in Bono, Paola and Kemp, Sandra 1991. Italian Feminist Thought, New York: Blackwell Pub.]
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Secondary Sources
Aa.vv. 2011. Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Conte, Lara, Fiorino, Vinzia, Martini, Vanessa (eds.), Pisa: ETS.
Aa.vv. 1975. Femminismo e lotta di classe in Italia (1970-1973), Frabotta, Biancamaria (ed.), Roma: Savelli.
Aa.vv. 2024. Libri e rose: le donne nell’editoria italiana degli anni Settanta, Cesana, Roberta, Piazzoni, Irene (eds.), Milano: Milano University Press.
Aa.vv. 2024. Ti darei un bacio: Carla Lonzi è tornata, Buttarelli, Annarosa (eds.), Bergamo: Moretti&Vitali.
Bertilotti, Teresa, Scattigno, Anna (eds.) 2005. Il femminismo degli anni Settanta, Roma: Viella.
Boccia, Maria Luisa 2014, Con Carla Lonzi. La mia vita è la mia opera, Roma: Ediesse.
Boccia, Maria Luisa 1990. L’io in rivolta. Vissuto e pensiero di Carla Lonzi, Milano: La Tartaruga.
Boccia, Maria Luisa 1987. Per una teoria dell’autenticità, in “Memoria”, n.19-20, 85-108.
Bono, Paola, Kemp, Sandra 1991. Italian Feminist Thought, New York: Blackwell Pub
Brückner, Margrit 2014. “On Carla Lonzi: The victory of the clitoris over the vagina as an act of women’s liberation”. European Journal of Women’s Studies. 21 (3): 278–282.
Bueti, Federica 2020. Poetics of Negation: The Personal in the Writings of Carla Lonzi, Hélène Cixous, Moyra Davey, Frances Stark, and Anne Boyer, London: Royal College of Art.
Buttarelli, Annarosa, 2024. Carla Lonzi: una filosofa della trasformazione, Milano: Feltrinelli.
Cardone, Lucia 2014. “Through the Screen: Carla Lonzi and Cinema”, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 21(3): 287-292.
Cucchi, Silvia, 2025. Storia di un’ambivalenza: sul diario di Carla Lonzi, Pisa: ETS.
Dalla Torre, Emanuela 2014. “The Clitoris Diaries: La donna clitoridea, Feminine Authenticity and the Phallic Allegory of Carla Lonzi’s Radical Feminism”. European Journal of Women’s Studies. 21(3): 219-232.
Graziano, Laura (ed.) 2005. Mancarsi. Assenza e rappresentazione del sé nella letteratura del Novecento, Verona: Ombre Corte.
Iamurri, Laura, 2016. Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia 1955-1970, Macerata: Quodlibet Studio.
Kristeva, Julia 1981. About Chinese Women, London: Marion Boyars.
Libreria delle donne di Milano 1987. Non credere di avere dei diritti, Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.
Lorenza, Luisa, Mascat Jamila (ed.) 2023. Feminism in Revolt: An Anthology, Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Malnis, Cecilia Magdalena 2020. “Carla Lonzi: aportes al feminismo italiano de la Segunda Ola. Los movimientos de mujeres: el Sujeto Imprevisto de la historia”, Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos, 22:19-36.
Melandri, Lea 1977. L’infamia originaria, Milano: edizioni L’erba voglio.
Melandri, Lea 2000. Una visceralità indicibile. La pratica dell’inconscio nel movimento delle donne degli anni Settanta, Milano: Fondazione Badaracco-FrancoAngeli.
Restaino, Franco, Cavarero, Adriana 2002. Le filosofie femministe, Milano: Mondadori.
Restaino, Franco 2003, Il femminismo: avanguardia filosofica di fine secolo. Carla Lonzi, in Di Giovanni, Piero 2003. Le avanguardie della filosofia italiana nel XX secolo, Milano: FrancoAngeli.
Subrizi, Carla 2023. “Contradictions and the Re-Invention of One’s Own Role: The Publishing House Scritti di Rivolta Femminile in the Life/Work of Carla Lonzi”, in Female Cultural Production in Modern Italy: Literature, Art and Intellectual History, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 247-261.
Ventrella, Francesco 2015. Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza, in “Studi culturali”, n. 1.
Ventrella, Francesco, Zapperi Giovanna (ed) 2020. Feminism and art in postwar Italy: the legacy of Carla Lonzi, London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
Vuillerod, Jean-Baptiste 2017. “Carla Lonzi, Crachons sur Hegel. Une révolte féministe”, Paris: Eterotopia.
Zapperi, Giovanna 2017. Carla Lonzi. Un’arte della vita, Bologna: DeriveApprodi.
Zapperi, Giovanna. “Art, Life and Labour: Carla Lonzi’s Existential Feminist Critique”, in Thinking Art: Materialisms, Labours, Forms, in Osborne, Peter (ed.), Kingston upon Thames, UK: CRMEP Books, 2020, 80-100.
Zapperi, Giovanna, 2017. “Challenging Feminist Art History. Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths”, in Feminism and Art History Now, Horne, eds. Vicky, Perry, Lara (ed.), London: I.B. Tauris. 104-124.
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Online Sources
- https://www.libreriadelledonne.it/
- https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carla-lonzi_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
- https://iconografiecarlalonzi.wordpress.com/
- https://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/edd.nsf/biografie/carla-lonzi
- https://www.archivignam.beniculturali.it/dm_0/GNAM/gnamSt023/allegati//IT/GNAM/ST0023/000001/IT.GNAM.ST0023.000001.0004.pdf
- https://diotimafilosofe.it/larivista/il-femminismo-avanguardia-filosofica-di-fine-secolo-carla-lonzi/
- https://www.museion.it/en/exhibitions/137-doing-deculturalization
- https://fotogalleriet.no/exhibition/la-passione/
- https://www.makhzin.org/issues/feminisms/finding-resonances-with-carla-lonzi
- https://shs.cairn.info/revue-l-homme-et-la-societe-2017-1-page-203?lang=fr
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ECC
Creation:
Lonzi’s entire thought is about creation. As art critic she problematises criticism, defining an absurdity the separation of the critical moment by the creative one. She concludes that «the complete and verifiable critical act is that which is part of artistic creation» (2017: 11). As feminist, she clearly divorced the creation’s notion from the idea of productivity and reproduction that characterises male domination. The imperative of productivity generates competitiveness among women, undermining any practice of liberation. Furthermore, efficiency is a concept that encourages women to enter a game where the rules are already set and to conform to a male-dominated world. Rivolta Femminile makes this clear: «We detest the mechanisms of competitiveness and the blackmail that is exercised in the world by the hegemony of efficiency» (2023: 17). According to Lonzi, feminism is creation because is not postponed to a future time: the «need to express oneself has been accepted […] as synonymous with liberation itself» (2023: 22). Hence, consciousness-raising becomes an act of creation that allows liberation. This also emerges in a collective writing which affirm how «by her absence woman performs an act of consciousness, liberating. Therefore creative» (2023: 65). In this text, Lonzi and the other women of Rivolta Femminile make explicit their unwillingness to play the role of «client and spectator» for male creativity, the «neutral counterpart that guarantees a priori to the protagonist of creativity the appreciation of its values» (2023: 65). Lonzi thematizes on several occasions the affinity between woman and artist as both experience the «immediate coincidence between doing and the sense of doing» (2023: 53). Above all, it is important to her that women always preserve «that extraordinary burst of emotional boldness that is part of the vital period of youth and with which individuals lay the foundations of the creativity that will shape their lives» (2023: 47).
Lonzi, Carla 2017. Autoritratto, Milano: Abscondita.
Lonzi, Carla 2023. Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: La Tartaruga.
Key words: creation – criticism – liberation – creativity
Unexpected Subject:
According to Lonzi, the unexpected subject is introduced into the world thanks to the rejection of the master-slave dialectic. Its appearance is possible when a dialectical, symmetrical approach is abandoned. The unexpected subject does not wish to take the place of the master. On the contrary, she represents the abandonment of the culture of power grabbing. Therefore, for women feminism should not mean fighting to conquer the positions and roles held by men. Nor is it a question of struggle for emancipation which, for Lonzi, remains within the same logic. It is about recognising one’s own ability to make every moment «a total modification of life» (2023: 60). Women are not in a dialectical relationship with the male world: their needs do not imply an antithesis, but rather a shift to another plane. Thus, self-criticism must give way to imagination. In doing so the destiny of the world is not always moving forward, as the male vision suggests:«The future of the world is open» Lonzi states, «it lies in starting along the path from the beginning again with woman as a subject» (2023: 60). This means looking away from the future and focusing on the present: the unexpected subject is the one that breaks the historical continuity of the protagonist.
Lonzi, Carla 2023. Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: La Tartaruga.
Key words: unexpected – subject – dialectic – history – world
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