Mirella Bentivoglio

Critical text

Mirella Bentivoglio (1922, Klagenfurt – 2017, Roma) was a poet, artist, critic, and curator. She joined the international verbo-visual art movement of the neo-avantgarde in the second half of the 20th century and became a leading and innovative figure. Her work explores the status of language as a creative visual medium and its capacity to reinforce or disrupt systems of power. Bentivoglio’s work developed over the course of a long career, spanning media including book production, photography, video, collage, and drawing. In the 1960s Bentivoglio was a pioneering figure in object poetry. In the following decade, she experimented with performances, action poetry, environmental poetry, and environmental interventions including the richly symbolic sculpture L’Ovo di Gubbio (1976). Her practice grew to include curation, as with her 1978 contribution Materialization of Language, featuring works by eighty female artists, at the Venice Biennale. In total, Bentivoglio exhibited ten times at the Venice Biennial, including the 59th edition, The Milk of Dreams, in 2022. Back to the Future presents Sembra (1971), a mobile lightbox displaying the word “sembra” or “shadow” in Portuguese. The indistinct text blends with the play of light and shadow, materialising its meaning while exposing the tension between a state of affairs and its description. Sembra is the only kinetic sculpture the artist realized in her life. The work also served as the basis for an art book featuring the titular image in varying degrees of pigment and shade.

Text by Anna Gritz