Visual, Ironic and Subversive Poetry

Lucia Marcucci, born in Florence in 1933, is one of the main proponents of the verbal-visual artistic movement of the neo-avant-garde in Italy since the mid-sixties, known as visual poetry.

After a period in avant-garde theatre, to which she merged a strong interest in poetry and literature, in 1965 in Florence, in an extremely culturally rich and fertile climate, Marcucci joined Gruppo 70, an interdisciplinary group which included painters, semiologists, poets and musicians.

Visual poetry employs the themes, techniques and languages of communication as a way to interpret the profound changes that have taken place within society.

These are the themes and practices shared by Lucia Marcucci who, through the use of collages, posters, montages of clippings from magazines and advertising leaflets, led a critique of media language and of mass communication, often maintaining an image of women stereotyped by the mass media advertising system.

Irony and subversion are the focal points of Lucia Marcucci's visual poetry as in the work La comunicazione è temporaneamente interrotta (Communication is temporarily interrupted), the acrylic on canvas printed from 2010 showing the image of a classic statuary group composed of a man and a woman arranged like a comic strip with the words ‘on’ and ‘off’.

Her works are organised as advertising slogans that blend words and images in a surprising juxtaposition, bordering on nonsense.

At the base of the work, the words ‘Communication is temporarily interrupted', handwritten by the artist, are repeated until they almost fade, until they become illegible signs, to reaffirm the difficulty or temporary impossibility of communication.

The work almost appears to refer to a disturbed radio signal and communication that is temporarily impossible.

The contents and messages of her works are attenuated by a strong ironic charge, sometimes more evident, other times the contrasts are accentuated by startling phrases, as in this case, in direct rivalry with the image.