Italian artist Marisa Merz (1926–2019) was famously camera-shy. In rare snapshots, such as a captivating photograph taken by Claudio Abate at her 1975 solo show in Rome, she would retreat from the camera’s gaze. Before Abate’s camera, Merz appears clad in her woven nylon Scarpette (Little Shoes), 1968, her back to him as she gazes out an open window at the moon.

The turn away is emblematic of Merz’s artistic ethos writ large. As she once wrote, in a 1975 issue of Data Arte magazine, “The artist is already an established role, like the wife, the son. But I don’t go along with these roles.”