MARIUCCIA SECOL: UNRAVELING

12 june- 1 november 2026

curated by Monika Branicka ed Eva Brioschi

Mariuccia Secol in 1968 in front of a painting from the series II Genesi. Courtesy of the artist’s family (private archive). Photo: unknown author.

From 12 June to 1 November 2026, Muzeum Susch will present Mariuccia Secol: Unraveling, the first major institutional retrospective dedicated to the eclectic Italian artist and activist Mariuccia Secol (b. 1929). Curated by Monika Branicka and Eva Brioschi, the exhibition spans more than seventy years of artistic practice, offering a comprehensive view of a body of work that intertwines radical feminism, social critique, and historical rediscovery.

This retrospective aligns with Muzeum Susch’s founding mission to highlight overlooked or misunderstood women artists of the international avant-garde, restoring to them the recognition long afforded to their male counterparts. Mariuccia Secol, whose work was for many years excluded from dominant narratives, now emerges as one of the most original voices in postwar Italian art. The exhibition reconstructs an artistic trajectory that remained marginalized for decades, presenting numerous previously unseen works brought to light through direct collaboration with the artist.

The exhibition traces Secol’s evolution from her early paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by existential themes and the trauma of war (Burned Cities, Holocaust). A crucial turning point was her work as a teacher in the painting workshop at the Bizzozero-Varese Psychiatric Hospital (1965–1988), during Franco Basaglia’s psychiatric reform movement. Within this context of marginalization, Secol discovered creativity as a tool for self-determination and healing.

Influenced by the climate of protest in 1968 and the emerging feminist movements, Secol abandoned her “silent brushes” and began working with everyday domestic materials such as aprons and metal scouring pads, which became the raw material for a practice grounded in refusal and resistance. The iconic work Casa di bambola (Doll’s House, 1970–73), created by dismantling her own clothing, including her wedding dress, marked her decisive rejection of the singular roles of wife and mother.

Le barriere, exhibition at Galleria Porta Ticinese, Milan, as part of the Mezzo Cielo series, 21 April – 12 June 1978. Left: work by Mariuccia Secol, Le barriere, unraveled threads and yarn, 180 × 180 × 180 cm; right: work by Milli Gandini, cross-stitch embroidery. © Mariuccia Secol and Manuela Gandini. Courtesy of the artist’s private archive. Photo: unknown author.

A central focus of the exhibition is the reconstruction of the years of activism of the Gruppo Femminista Immagine of Varese, founded in 1974 by Secol together with Milli Gandini and Mirella Tognola, and soon joined by Silvia Cibaldi, Clemen Parrocchetti, and Mariagrazia Sironi. The group became connected to the global campaign for Wages for Housework, taking part in major collective gatherings of the movement.

The exhibition also presents documentation of the group’s historic participation in the 1978 Venice Biennale and highlights the development of Secol’s distinctive formal language, centered on the concept of “refusal.” Rather than weaving, Secol removes threads from the fabric’s structure, creating voids and tears that evoke the female body and open up new possibilities of meaning, allowing light and knowledge to emerge through inner exploration. Mature works such as Animus-Anima (1982) demonstrate how the human fiber is deconstructed to make space for thought.

In recent decades, Secol’s work has expanded toward a broader global critique, addressing issues such as migration crises, international conflicts, and ecological collapse. She was a pioneer in developing a form of intersectionality in which women’s struggles intersect with the defense of all marginalized and oppressed identities.

Mariuccia Secol: Unraveling is more than an exhibition: it presents a “rebellious archive” that challenges the official history of art and broadens prevailing narratives about the artistic practices of the twentieth century.

Mariuccia Secol, Sala d’attesa / Bisso rosso (Waiting Room / Red Byssus), 1988, unraveled and mended tapestry on Cordura and cotton, 170 × 245 cm. © Mariuccia Secol. Photo: Magdalena Typiak.

The exhibition unfolds as a natural cycle, a circle coming full turn: the first large room focuses on the transforming body in relation to the different stages of the chrysalis and offers a comprehensive overview of Mariuccia Secol’s artistic journey. In the other rooms, the narrative develops before returning to its point of departure, reflecting her personal and creative path.

The journey begins with the dark, somber paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, dense with the trauma of war and existential tension, and continues with the paintings of the mid-1960s, which reveal the emergence of a new sense of subjectivity. From traditional painting, the artist moved on to her first textile works, symbols of a refusal of conventional patterns, culminating in the frayed silhouettes, where the technique of removing threads creates new forms through emptiness, allowing light and awareness to emerge.

At the center of the first room, in all its imposing presence, stands the monumental work Donna ponte: a ten-meter textile installation that embodies her poetics of intersectionality, capable of bringing together different fronts — between masculine and feminine, self and other — and of embracing universal marginality as a message of hope for the future: a perfect representation of this synthesis of her research, oriented toward welcoming difference and valuing fragile subjectivities.

After this comprehensive introduction, the exhibition develops thematically and chronologically, with rooms dedicated to different media, including pastels, fabrics, and ceramics, highlighting her freedom in moving beyond the boundaries of traditional languages. These sections emphasize Secol’s diverse techniques and her ability to navigate the fluid boundary between physical expression and ethical commitment, reconstructing a universe long experienced by the artist herself as personal and intimate, thus bringing a private and domestic practice to the center of institutional attention.

What emerges is an uncompromising vision, underscoring how, seventy years later, many issues remain unresolved.

Milli Gandini and Mariuccia Secol at the exhibition La mamma è uscita at Galleria Cavedra, Varese, 1–23 March 1980. In the background, Secol’s work La mamma è uscita. Courtesy of the artist’s family (private archive). Photo: unknown author. Reproduction: Magdalena Typiak.

Hatje Cantz will publish a comprehensive monograph with texts by Monika Branicka, Eva Brioschi, Maria Bremer, Sonia D’Alto, Janis Jefferies, Maria Inés Plaza Lazo, Marco Scotini, and an interview with Manuela Gandini.

Mariuccia Secol was born in Castellanza, Varese, in 1929. She is an Italian artist and activist, trained under Galliano Mazzon and Francesco Fedeli. She settled in Daverio in 1954, transforming her home into a lively cultural salon frequented by intellectuals such as Bruno Munari, Enrico Baj, and Leonardo Sciascia.

Her direction of the painting atelier at the Bizzozero psychiatric hospital from 1965 to 1988 was fundamental, as she experienced the Basaglian revolution firsthand. In the wake of 1968 and feminism, Secol embraced the “creativity of refusal,” abandoning brushes in favor of textiles and domestic materials.

In 1974, she co-founded the Gruppo Femminista “Immagine” of Varese and advocated for wages for housework. She invented a process of removing threads from fabric that evokes the wounds of the body. Her practice evolved toward an intersectional commitment, addressing ecological crises, migration, and universal violence. Secol dismantles imposed roles in order to stitch together a new collective and conscious identity.