This article analyses a set of performances and installations created by the Italian artist Fabio Mauri (1926- -2009) in connection with his theoretical writings and anchors them to the international artistic concern of the time: institutional critique. Eight of Mauri’s performances from the 1970s are documented. This study centres on the fi rst three chronologically – Che cosa è il fascismo, Esercizi spirituali and Ebrea, all dated 1971 – which better exemplify the theme on which Mauri focused throughout this period. As theoretical texts, photographs and objects reveal, these eight performances and installations all involve the critique of ideology as institution. This practice shares many similarities with institutional critique, that is, the international and systematic inquiry that aims at subverting the roles of the art market and artistic institutions. This paper offers a novel interpretation of Mauri’s work as an example of institutional critique in Italy.