Cathy Josefowitz Retrospective 'The Thinking Body' Opens at MACRO Rome

The MACRO museum in Rome is hosting 'The Thinking Body', a retrospective of Swiss-American artist Cathy Josefowitz (1956–2014). The exhibition takes its title from Mabel Elsworth Todd's book, which influenced Josefowitz's research. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the show explores the inhabited body through a blend of visual arts and dance dramaturgy. Josefowitz's work challenges hierarchies and reflects on the body's representation and dysfunctional idealization. The performative aspect is central, questioning the body's emancipation and choreographic identification in space, framed by a female gaze that focuses on marginality, otherness, and gender. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, and installations that create a synesthetic dialogue between pictorial and spatial dimensions, human and animal bodies, real and painted forms. Notably, a series of watercolor and ink drawings on restaurant and hotel receipts from the late 1980s to early 1990s, when Josefowitz lived in Pietrasanta, documents her European travels. Philippe Daverio noted in the 2012 catalog 'Meditation In & Out' that Josefowitz took 'the axonometric space and contortion of bodies from Francis Bacon, and chromatic legitimacy from Matisse.' The exhibition was curated by Rossella Della Vecchia.