Social Reproduction Struggles and Art Making in 1970s Italy: On the Work of Le Pezze and Gruppo Femminista Immagine di Varese

Focusing on the context of 1970s Italy, the article analyses the practices of two women-only art collectives whose artistic production materialised the ongoing struggle against the mechanisms of social reproduction and the labour it entailed for women. Notably, it explores the artistic and militant strategies they devised to discard traditional gender roles, disrupt the sexual division of labour operating at both socioeconomic and cultural levels, and emerge as creative and political subjects. Keywords Social reproduction struggle, Artistic and reproductive work, Feminist subjectification, Le Pezze, Gruppo Femminista Immagine di Varese