5 exhibitions by female artists to see this summer in Italy

Summer doesn't just mean the sea, the mountains, lazy days by the pool, long naps to recharge your batteries from stress and avalanches of ice cream. It can also mean taking time for yourself, reading a book, listening to an album or going to a museum and discovering new artists. From Turin to Naples, Italy offers many opportunities to visit exhibitions and enjoy paintings, statues, installations and visual projects that range from classical art to extreme experiments. There are important and famous names like Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Lange, but also lesser known but equally interesting ones like Anna Franceschini or Rachel Whiteread.

G-club has selected 5 exhibitions by as many women artists that you should see in Italy this summer.

Lucia Marcucci - Bolzano

With a series of works from the Mart, the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura and her private collection, Museion in Bolzano introduces us to Lucia Marcucci, an ironic and provocative artist who worked in Florence in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when post-war Italy II was marked by economic boom, social and political realignment, student protests and feminist movements. All themes brought to life through her works and collages, visual poetry that mixes words and images, literary and everyday language, expressed through mass media.

Title: Lucia Marcucci. Poesie e no

When: until 3 September

Where: Museion, Bolzano

Dorothea Lange - Turin

CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin is showing a major retrospective dedicated to a true icon of 20th century documentary photography: Dorothea Lange. The exhibition, which includes more than 200 images, focuses mainly on the 1930s and 1940s, the absolute peak of her activity and the period in which she documented the momentous events that changed the economic and social structure of the United States. "A social observer by choice and an artist by instinct," as John Szarkow wrote. In her photographs, such as the poignant Migrant Mother from 1936, Lange portrays the exodus in search of work of farmers in the southern US brought to their knees by drought and sandstorms. Today, as then, his works tell of climate crisis, migration, discrimination, poverty and despair. Topics that are still very topical today.

Title: Dorothea Lange. Racconti di vita e lavoro

When: until 8 October

Where: CAMERA - Italian Centre for Photography, Turin

Kazuko Miyamoto - Naples

MADRE in Naples opens the museum's new triennial programme with an exhibition on Kazuko Miyamoto. Held in the historic Palazzo Donnaregina, the exhibition chronicles the Japanese artist's career from the 1970s to the early 2000s and the evolution of her language, including her dialogue with artists, poets and musicians. As a Japanese-born American living and working in the US, Miyamoto has found a very personal way of approaching different art forms: from graphic works to drawings involving string constructions to minimalist sculptures made of string and nails, from works made with direct printing or photocopying inspired by New York street life in the 1980s to installations, videos, photographs and performances.

Title: Kazuko Miyamoto

When: until 9 October

Where: MADRE, Naplesi

Rachel Feinstein - Florence

Rachel Feinstein's works range from sculpture to painting. She draws inspiration from classical art and Renaissance painting as well as modern fairy tales and cartoons. Sacred and profane, classical and kitsch merge to create a unique and personal language rooted in the historical avant-garde of Surrealism. On view in Florence until 18 September 2023 in some of the city's most iconic locations (Museo Stefano Bardini, Palazzo Medici Riccardi and Museo Marino Marini), this monographic exhibition presents a selection of works inspired by Gothic and Renaissance, Florentine and Nordic traditions, but also drawn from the collections of the three museums in which they are exhibited.

Title: Rachel Feinstein in Florence

When: until 18 September

Where: Museo Novecento in Florence and at various locations in the city

Dara Birnbaum - Milano 

The Fondazione Prada is opening a new exhibition on Dara Birnbaum in its Observatory on the fourth floor of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. It is a unique opportunity to approach the work of the American artist, who experiments with video, audio, photographs and 3D prints in the field of visual languages, exploring themes such as gender bias in popular culture, the way mass media portrays female icons and figures, or the capitalist control of the flow of information. The result is a scathing critique of American society that exposes how the body and its representation are sexualised and distorted by the media for capitalist purposes.

Title: Dara Birnbaum

When: until 25 September

Where: Fondazione Prada Observatory, Milan