Carla Lonzi and the Female Revolution

The book starts from the breakdown of her friendship with Carla Accardi, who did not give up her artistic career in the name of feminism, and from her disillusionment and subsequent detachment from the world of artists.

She therefore exposes positions opposite to what she had previously stated in Autoritratto, probably also due to the poor reception of her ideas among artists.

According to Carla Lonzi, Accardi identified with a myth of art that did nothing but repeat already established social roles.

Therefore, Lonzi changes her conception of the artist, whom she first exalted as authentic and free, and who instead participated in the marginalisation and exclusion of women.

We must consequently reject patriarchal creativity and take the path of feminist self-awareness. It is precisely in the latter that she sees the potential of non-patriarchal creativity.

The result is the Manifesto of Female Revolt, published in July, which sanctions the birth of the first Italian feminist groups

Lonzi wrote it, and in the same year she wrote Sputiamo su Hegel, an invitation to take leave of the patriarchal culture, addressed above all to women, feminists and political militants, who give more credit to men's theories and forms of struggle than to experience and history of one's own sex.

For Lonzi, leave was a radical lifestyle choice.

She interrupted the profession and refused any other form of activity and public life to devote herself entirely to the Rivolta femminile groups, established in many cities, to writing and to editing the series Scritti di Rivolta femminile.