Marginale, personale, politico: il ricamo e il tessuto nell’arte degli anni Ottanta del Novecento

Abstract

Besides the “return to painting”, in the 1980s art we witness the return of practices considered before then mainly as crafts or marginal like embroidery and weaving. In a period characterized by great freedom and by the possibility to mix high and low, the thread and the fabric become powerful allies of the artists but mostly of female artists. In the 1980s embroidery and weaving transform into multifaceted means of personal and political communication. From Miriam Schapiro’s colorful femmages to Magdalena Abakanowicz’s hand-woven artworks, from Maria Lai’s Books to Alighiero Boetti’s embroideries, in the artworks created by these artists with the means of sewing and weaving appear a whole range of themes that will be of a great importance for the artists of the 1990s, at least for the common tune on narratives that turn from private to public and political. The aim is to retrace some of the fundamental issues faced by the artists in the 1980s by taking as vantage point the artworks created with fabrics, threads and cloths: a history that, in some ways, still has much to tell.