Il Color Exhibition @ THE POOL NYC, Palazzo Fagnani Ronzoni, Milan - First chapter of the exhibition "Times of the Gaze. 90 Years of Italian Photography in Two Acts"

Il Color

First chapter of the exhibition "Times of the Gaze. 90 Years of Italian Photography in Two Acts"

THE POOL NYC at Palazzo Fagnani Ronzoni, Milan

October 8 – December 20, 2025 

Mario Cresci

From the serie A Tutto Tondo, 2007

Vincenzo Castella

Monte San Giacomo Salerno, 1982

THE POOL NYC at Palazzo Fagnani Ronzoni in the heart of Milan's historic center (Via Santa Maria Fulcorina, 20) presents the exhibition Il Colore, the first chapter of the series I tempi dello sguardo. 90 anni di fotografia italiana in due atti (Times of the Gaze. 90 Years of Italian Photography in Two Acts), which features two exhibitions at different but consecutive times, bringing together a total of 194 works by 55 Italian and international artists who have shaped the history of 20th-century photography.

The project's title alludes to the artists' ability to mark an era, a "time" in our history, with their gaze, and at the same time invites us to rediscover the time—away from the excesses of today's visual production—to rediscover the extraordinary talents that have made Italian photography unique, even internationally.

The first event, curated by THE POOL NYC, presents the experiences of those masters who have made the use of color one of their most characteristic features.

Luigi Ghirri

Olanda - Otterlo, 2009

Luigi Ghirri

Parma, 1984

Franco Fontana

Paesaggio - Italia, 1995

The exhibition, comprising 115 photographs, features, among others, works by Luigi Ghirri, master of light and quiet, by Giovanni Chiaramonte who travels to Venice to capture the city's most hidden corners, and by Franco Fontana who shapes the landscape through colour, from the geometric urban visions of the 1970s to the abstract sensuality of the Piscina series, to Italian landscapes transfigured into fields of colour.

Guido Guidi

Pomposa, 1983

Mario Schifano

"Arte istantanea – 3000 fotografie di Mario Schifano" 

22 Aprile - 19 Giugno. Foto-n 2403, 1994

Mario Schifano

"Arte istantanea – 3000 fotografie di Mario Schifano" 

22 Aprile - 19 Giugno. Foto-n 2413, 1994

The exhibition continues with Guido Guidi who makes photography an act of waiting, with Mario Schifano, irreverent and experimental, who works with the same creative freedom with which he interpreted painting, while Paolo Gioli , the alchemist, although starting from sensitive photographic material, considers it a "material" to be shaped and manipulated.

If on the one hand, Leonardo Genovese captures fragments of dreams through a fierce and revealing light, the Lucanian “controra”, which cuts into bodies and deforms appearances, Rita Lintz, on the other hand, transforms waste into relics: rags become carpets and waste becomes beauty.

Jiang Zhi 蒋志

Rainbow n 2, 2006

The first act of the exhibition is completed with photographs by international artists, including Denis Brihat, Wim Delvoye, Claus Goedicke, Béatrice Helg, John Hilliard, Tracey Moffatt, Jiang Zhi, Wang Qingsong .

During the exhibition period, Palazzo Fagnani Ronzoni hosts a series of collateral events, such as meetings, talks, book presentations, and themed evenings with artists, historians, and photography critics.

Artists : Denis Brihat, Vincenzo Castella, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Wim Delvoye, Cosimo Di Leo Ricatto, Franco Fontana, Vittore Fossati, Andrea Galvani, Leonardo Genovese, Luigi Ghirri, Luca Gilli, Paolo Gioli, Claudio Gobbi, Claus Goedicke, Guido Guidi, Béatrice Helg, John Hilliard, Jiang Zhi, Luisa Lambri, Rita Lintz, Marcello Mariana, Tracey Moffatt, Brigitte Niedermair, Wang Qingsong, Mario Schifano, Davide Tranchina, Luigi Veronesi, Cuchi White, Silvio Wolf, Marco Zanta.

The second episode, scheduled from January 16 to February 28, 2026 , will be dedicated to Black and White , with works by authors such as Renato Di Bosso, Alfredo Camisa, Mario De Biasi, Mario Giacomelli, Antonio Biasiucci, Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Luigi Erba, Andrea Galvani, in dialogue with international photographers, including Elliott Erwitt, Jan Groover, Horst P. Horst, Michael Kenna, William Klein, Minor White.

The Pool NYC | Palazzo Fagnani Ronzoni 

Via Santa Maria Fulcorina, 20, Milano

www.thepoolnewyorkcity.com

Paola D'Agostino, Royal Museums of Turin Director - Musei Reali di Torino

Paola D'Agostino, Royal Museums of Turin Director - Musei Reali di Torino

Paola D'Agostino

Director of the Musei Reali di Torino

Photograph by Giuliano Berti 

for the Royal Museums of Turin

Courtesy Musei Reali di Torino

Royal Museums of Turin

Palazzo Reale di Torino

Photograph by Daniele Bottallo

for the Royal Museums of Turin

Courtesy Musei Reali di Torino

Palazzo Reale Galleria del Daniel

Photograph by Andrea Guermani

for the Royal Museums of Turin

Courtesy Musei Reali di Torino

Palazzo Reale Scala delle Forbici

Photograph by Dario Fusaro

for the Royal Museums of Turin

Courtesy Musei Reali di Torino

Following the completion of the appointment procedures, Dr. Paola D'Agostino took up office as Director of the Royal Museums of Turin on 1 October 2025 .

Paola D'Agostino takes over the prestigious role held by Enrica Pagella from December 1, 2015, to November 30, 2023, and, following the recognition of the Royal Museums as a first-tier state museum, by Mario Turetta, Head of the Department for Cultural Activities of the Ministry of Culture, as Deputy Director.

An art historian and specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, she graduated and obtained her PhD from the University of Naples “Federico II”, with specializations at the Courtauld Institute of Art and University College London. From 2015 to 2024 she led the Bargello Museums in Florence and boasts extensive curatorial experience abroad, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as a Senior Research Associate in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, to the Yale University Art Gallery, as the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator in European Art .

In her first words as Director, Paola D'Agostino declared : “ I am very honored to begin my new role as Director of the Royal Museums of Turin, which, with their monumental heritage, extraordinary art and archaeological collections, Library, and Royal Gardens, constitute one of the most prestigious museum complexes in Italy and the world. Over the last ten years, the Royal Museums have experienced extraordinary growth, thanks to the two high-profile directors who preceded me. It is a privilege to contribute to the cultural project and to the valorization of these places and of the Savoy dynasty, which designed them, enriched them with masterpieces, and modified them over time .”

" Walking through the monumental halls of the Royal Palace ," continued Paola D'Agostino, " wandering through the spaces of the Manica Nuova with its diverse collections, stopping in the Royal Library, or strolling through the Royal Gardens gives a sense of the centrality of the Royal Museums to the city. These halls convey not only the cultural and political history of Turin and Piedmont, but also the unique history of Italy and its extraordinary cultural heritage ."

Paola D'Agostino - Biographical notes

Paola D'Agostino is an art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture. She studied at the University of Naples Federico II, where she received a PhD in art history in 2003. She specialized in London, at the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA, 1998) and University College London (MPhil program, 1998–1999). While studying in London, she collaborated on the exhibition Earth and Fire. Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova , at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2001–2002).

He taught for several years as a contract professor of modern art history at several Italian universities and held seminars at British and American universities.

From 2009 to 2013, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a Senior Research Associate in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts . During her tenure at the Metropolitan Museum, she also helped organize the exhibitions Bernini: Sculpting in Clay (2012–2013) and Antonio Canova: The Seven Last Works (2013). In spring 2013, she was the Cynthia Hazen Polsky/MET Visiting Curator at the American Academy in Rome. From 2013 to 2015, she was the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator in European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, where, among other things, she co-curated the exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art 1760–1860 .

From December 1, 2015, to January 14, 2024, she served as Director of the Bargello Museums, a museum group that includes the Bargello National Museum, the Medici Chapels Museum, the Orsanmichele Complex, the Palazzo Davanzati Museum, and the Casa Martelli Museum. During her tenure, these five museums underwent extraordinary work on their monumental buildings—among the oldest and most important in Florence—including collection reorganizations, experimental restorations, research agreements with Italian and international universities, and exhibitions, with prestigious international collaborations from the National Gallery in Washington, to the Museums of Berlin, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

During her tenure as Director of the Bargello Museums, the Bargello National Museum was awarded the 2017 medal by the President of the Italian Republic, Hon. Sergio Mattarella, for organizing the exhibition "The Factory of Beauty. The Ginori Manufactory and its People of Statues." She was responsible for organizing the Bargello Museums' exhibition " Donatello. The Renaissance," curated by Francesco Caglioti, co-organized by the Bargello Museums and the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation. The exhibition received the prestigious Apollo Award in London for best exhibition of 2022.

Since 2023, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the IMT School of Advanced Studies in Lucca.

In 2024 she collaborated on the “AD Arte Project – national platform of services for the accessibility of cultural sites”, for the General Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture and from January to June 2025 she was Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies.

On July 17, 2025, she was selected as Director of the Royal Museums of Turin, following an international competition by the Ministry of Culture for five Directors of national museums and archaeological parks.

ROYAL MUSEUMS OF TURIN

MUSEI REALI DI TORINO

Piazzetta Reale 1 – 10122 Torino – Italia

museireali.beniculturali.it

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classivo / The Forms of Classicism @ Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Robert Mapplethorpe 

Le forme del classivo / The Forms of Classicism

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venezia

The Rooms of Photography, Venice

Through 6 January 2026

Robert Mapplethorpe

Self Portrait, 1975 

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Robert Mapplethorpe

The Sluggard, 1978

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Robert Mapplethorpe

Derrick Cross, 1983

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Robert Mapplethorpe

Dennis Speight, 1983

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography in Venice hosts a major exhibition dedicated to one of the most influential – and still, in many ways, provocative – figures in international photography: ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE (New York, 1946 – Boston, 1989). Curated by Denis Curti, Artistic Director of Le Stanze della Fotografia, Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classivo is organised and promoted by Marsilio Arte and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

This retrospective marks the first chapter in a broader trilogy dedicated to the study and exploration of Mapplethorpe’s work. Two further exhibitions will follow in 2026. Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del desiderio [The forms of desire], to be held at Palazzo Reale in Milan, will present a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s most iconic, powerful, and daring images, focusing on the most intense aspects of his practice. Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme della bellezza [The forms of beauty] will be shown at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis in Rome and will centre on Mapplethorpe’s reflections on beauty as classical ideal, featuring direct comparisons and a special section devoted to a number of significant photographs taken in Italy, now exhibited for the first time.

To accompany the trilogy, a single major catalogue will be published by Marsilio Arte, gathering all three exhibitions into one comprehensive volume. Featuring 257 works, it will offer a sweeping look at Mapplethorpe’s entire output and the evolution of his visual language.

«The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation is delighted to collaborate with Marsilio Arte, Denis Curti, and his colleagues on these upcoming exhibitions devoted to Mapplethorpe, which will be beautifully presented in three outstanding venues and institutions. Denis Curti’s thoughtful curatorial approach will offer visitors a unique experience, tailoring each show to its location and highlighting different facets of Mapplethorpe’s art. While the exhibitions will share certain themes, each will adopt a distinct perspective on his work. Venice has not hosted a major Mapplethorpe retrospective since 1992, when Germano Celant’s iconic international show was presented at Palazzo Fortuny. We eagerly anticipate Mapplethorpe’s return to Venice after 33 years, as well as the exhibitions planned for Rome and Milan», said Michael Ward Stout, President of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Patti Smith, 1986

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Robert Mapplethorpe

Isabella Rossellini, 1988

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Robert Mapplethorpe

“Flowers” Purple Callas, 1987

Photo © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

Featuring over 200 photographs, some of which are on view in Italy for the first time, Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of Classicism at Le Stanze della Fotografia pays tribute to the great American artist and picks up the thread laid out by curator Germano Celant in his 2005 exhibition Between Ancient and Modern. An Anthology (Turin), placing Mapplethorpe’s work back into the wider context of mid-20th century American art and culture. It is this classical dimension of Mapplethorpe’s photography – particularly emphasised in Venice through direct comparisons with images of ancient statuary – that renders his portraits so striking. These bodies, captured in their sculptural beauty and form, appear timeless: age-old yet contemporary expressions of desire, shaped by the geometry of light and transfigured into eternal, almost divine icons that remain deeply, unmistakably human.

The exhibition draws attention to Mapplethorpe’s pursuit of a perfect curvature, a sensual, almost sacred roundness, evident in the depictions of both male and female bodies, as well as in his magnificent photographs of flowers. These are laid bare in all their delicacy, forming poetic, ambiguous compositions. As curator Denis Curti notes, «Mapplethorpe uses photography to reinterpret and renew classical aesthetics, heightening the dialogue between the living body and ideal sculpture. The comparison reveals his ability to transpose the grace and perfection of classical form into contemporary photography, through meticulous attention to detail and light. Statues, governed by an incomplete sexuality, remind us of the importance of flesh in the language of seduction. Mapplethorpe dissolves their marble limbs, allowing a sensual beauty to emerge from beneath layers of rigidity, breathing new life into them».

The exhibition opens with Mapplethorpe’s earliest collages and ready-mades from the late 1960s, many of which have never been shown before. Created using original drawings, cuttings from homoerotic magazines and objets trouvés, these early pieces reflect his search for identity and his fascination with experimentation from the outset of his career, layering disparate elements into bold visual statements.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

These are followed by portraits of his companion, friend, and muse Patti Smith, captured in intimate, iconic poses that convey both her androgyny and vulnerability; and by images of bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, which explore strength, endurance and femininity while transcending conventional notions of gender. Mapplethorpe depicts her sculpted body with classical precision, celebrating power and beauty through an aesthetic grounded in antiquity.

Unsettling self-portraits reveal his ongoing exploration of identity as something fluid and mutable. Through carefully constructed poses and provocative symbolism, Mapplethorpe presents himself both as artist and subject, examining the boundaries between the private self and public persona.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Throughout the exhibition, male nudes take centre stage as odes to classical perfection, emphasising strength, sensuality and symmetry through refined lighting and composition. These works navigate desire and eroticism while openly challenging traditional social norms. Similarly, the female nudes on display in Venice reveal Mapplethorpe’s elegant, minimalist approach: a play of curves, folds and lines that evokes what art historian Arthur C. Danto described as «self-aware women with an almost regal power».

Also on view are portraits of figures such as Truman Capote, Glenn Close, Richard Gere, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Annie Leibovitz, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Isabella Rossellini, Susan Sarandon, Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol and many others. For Robert Mapplethorpe, portraiture was never simply an intimate encounter between two individuals, but rather a kind of visual altar, where the subject’s physical presence becomes transfigured, enmeshed in a subtle game of desire and possession.

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice

Exhibition View. Photograph by Matteo de Fina

Among the most iconic works in the exhibition are his photos of flowers – calla lilies, orchids, and tulips – captured at the precise moment they seem to become taut with energy, transformed into pulsing muscle. These works strike a delicate balance between stately reverence, achieved through subtle monochrome tones, and the vibrant dynamism of colour. Throughout, ancient statuary provides a powerful point of comparison: defined by an unresolved sexuality, these classical forms underscore the centrality of flesh in Mapplethorpe’s seductive visual language.

Thanks to the Mapplethorpe Foundation, exceptional vintage ephemera are on display. The archival items include two original Patti Smith audio cassettes, a 45 rpm record, gallery and museum exhibition invitations, posters, a limited edition, signed, and leather-bound copy of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, illustrated with Mapplethorpe gravures, magazines, handwritten letters from Mapplethorpe to his mentor and lover Sam Wagstaff, and the memorial card from Wagstaff's funeral.

Also on view in the exhibition are two short films directed by Robert Mapplethorpe: Still Moving: Patti Smith from 1978 and Lady with Lisa Lyon from 1984.

LE STRANZE DELLA FOTOGRAFIA

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore

www.lestanzedellafotografia.it

Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico, 10 April 2025 – 6 January 2026 

Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore 

Maurizio Galimberti: Polaroid Mosaics Exhibition @ Venice, Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography, Venice

Maurizio Galimberti 

tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino 

on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons

Le Stanze della Fotografia / 

The Rooms of Photography, Venice 

Through 10 August 2025

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

Charlotte Gainsburg 

Polaroid plate, 50 x 50 cm, 2003 

By Maurizio Galimberti/Photomovie

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

Isabella Rossellini 

Polaroid plate, 2003, 50 x 60 cm 

By Maurizio Galimberti/ Photomovie

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

Johnny Depp 

Polaroid plate, 2015, 50 x 60 cm 

By Maurizio Galimberti/Photomovie

Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography presents the exhibition Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino [Maurizio Galimberti on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons], curated by Denis Curti, organised by Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Internationally known for his portraits of celebrities like Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp and Umberto Eco, and for having published books and staged site-specific exhibitions on New York, Paris, Milan, Rome and Venice, Maurizio Galimberti presents some of his most iconic Polaroid mosaics in Venice – including Johnny Depp, Barbara Bouchet and Angelica Huston – alongside more recent works, some of them previously unseen, such as those dedicated to Taylor Swift.

Maurizio Galimberti (Como, 1956) in 1983 began to use the Polaroid camera almost exclusively, appreciating it for the immediacy of its results and the possibility of “manipulation”. With it he creates photographic mosaics, the artistic form for which he is best known. His expressive language mixes a sensitivity to the contemporary image with influences derived from the historical avant-gardes - Futurism and Cubism for shapes and spirit, Surrealism and Dadaism for modes.

As Denis Curti observes, «his works do not set out to reproduce reality faithfully, but are the product of an investigation of the visible, an operation of breaking down the world that finds its ideal instrument in photography. Galimberti takes inspiration from David Hockney’s photographic collages and is guided in his research by such illustrious models as the Futurist works of Umberto Boccioni or Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, inspired in turn by Etienne-Jules Marey breakdown of movement» (D. Curti, Capire la fotografia contemporanea, Marsilio 2020).

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

Messico (4)

Polaroid plate, 2002, 40 x 50cm 

By Maurizio Galimberti/Archivio M.G. - N.308

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

New York Studio n. 10 

Polaroid plate, 2024, 31 x 66 cm 

By Maurizio Galimberti/Angelos Dimitriou

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

Taylor Swift (1) 

Polaroid plate, 2024, 50 x 54 cm

By Maurizio Galimberti/Luchi Collection

The exhibition is divided into six sections: Cenacolo, History, Sport, Portraits, Taylor Swift and Places, each of which presents a different facet of his work and his approach to photography. His creations, characterised by a multifaceted and fragmented vision of reality, are taken apart and put back together as in a mosaic, offering a profound reflection on perception and on the multiplicity of viewpoints.

The images are almost always manipulated at the development stage, exerting pressure with simple tools – like pens and wooden sticks – directly onto the surface of the support, or assembled into mosaic-like compositions, in which each photograph contributes to the formation of an end result able to create a spectacular overall vision.

«His technical inventions, manipulations, ready-mades and mosaics – Denis Curti still observes – are none other than the metaphor for a transversal language that does not pass through the filter of rationality, and, precisely for this reason, becomes emotion. In every one of his photos there is a precise gesturality, a visual act that finds its synthesis inside the definition of «Instant Artist», invented by Maurizio himself to describe his production, because, when he decided to transform his youthful passion into a profession, he chose the Instamatic camera as his ideal instrument. In his hands, this medium goes beyond the purely descriptive detail, through a procedure that is calculated and always oriented towards the transfiguration of the visible».

Le Stanze della Fotografia 

The Rooms of Photography

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore

www.lestanzedellafotografia.it

Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino

Maurizio Galimberti on Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino's American Lessons

Le Stanze della Fotografia / The Rooms of Photography, Venice, 10 April – 10 August 2025

Kandinsky and Italy @ MA*GA Museum, Gallarate, Italy - Kandinsky e l'Italia @ Museo MA*GA, Gallarate

Kandinsky and Italy

Kandinsky e l'Italia

MA*GA Museum, Gallarate

Museo MA*GA, Gallarate

November 30, 2025 - April 12, 2026

In italiano qui sotto

ENRICO PRAMPOLINI

Composizione, 1950

Oil on masonite

MAGA Museum Collection, Gallarate

From 30 November 2025 to 12 April 2026, the MA*GA in Gallarate (VA) hosts a large retrospective revolving around the figure of Vassily Kandinsky, one of the pioneers of abstract art.

The exhibition focuses on the centrality of the Russian master's work and thought in relation to the European scene and, in particular, to the great season of Italian abstraction that developed between the 1930s and 1950s.

The exhibition recounts the birth of abstract art and its evolution in Europe and Italy, whose influences are still alive and well in contemporary art today. This journey through masterpieces from the MA*GA Museum and the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro, enriched by prestigious loans from public and private collections, showcases works by artists such as Paul Klee, Enrico Prampolini, Mario Radice, Atanasio Soldati, and Emilio Vedova.

Curated by Emma Zanella and Elisabetta Barisoni, designed and produced by the MA*GA Museum and the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro (VE).

-----

Dal 30 novembre 2025 al 12 aprile 2026, il MA*GA di Gallarate (VA) accoglie un’ampia retrospettiva che ruota attorno alla figura di Vassily Kandinsky, uno dei pionieri dell’arte astratta.

Curata da Emma Zanella ed Elisabetta Barisoni, progettata e realizzata dal Museo MA*GA e dalla Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro (VE), la mostra dal titolo Kandinsky e l’Italia si concentrerà sulla centralità dell’opera e del pensiero del maestro russo in relazione alla scena europea e, in particolare, alla grande stagione dell’astrattismo italiano che si è sviluppata tra gli anni trenta e gli anni cinquanta del Novecento.

Il percorso espositivo racconterà la nascita dell’arte astratta e la sua evoluzione europea e italiana, i cui esiti sono ancora oggi vivi e presenti nel linguaggio artistico contemporaneo, attraverso capolavori provenienti dai due musei, arricchiti da prestigiosi prestiti di collezioni pubbliche e private, di artisti quali Paul Klee, Enrico Prampolini, Mario Radice, Atanasio Soldati, Emilio Vedova.

MUSEO MA*GA

MA*GA MUSEUM

Fondazione Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea ‘Silvio Zanella’

Via Egidio De Magri 1, 21013 Gallarate (VA)

www.museomaga.it

Suresh Prandi @ Maroncelli 12 Gallery, Milan - "Spirit and Spectres in Suresh's colour​​" Exhibition

Spirit and Spectres in Suresh's colour​​

Maroncelli 12 Gallery, Milan

Through September 26, 2025

Maroncelli 12 gallery presents the Suresh Prandi’s debut on the art scene and the power of his painting. “Spirito e spettri nel colore di Suresh / Spirit and Spectres in Suresh’s colour” is curated by art historian Bianca Tosatti. This is the first ever exhibition of this young artist. 

The exhibition will continue at the Gliacrobati gallery in Turin, in June-July 2026. 

Suresh Prandi’s works move emotions: the artist’s vision breaks the canonical scheme of perspective, in a dense carpet of pasty chromatic fields, supported by black strokes that allude to forms of human features. Suresh Prandi’s creative process is born from a meditative state during which the lines become tangled on a chromatic base stratified on many levels: in fact, as in the gymnastics that the artist systematically practices, spiritual understanding cannot be seen unless one learns the right techniques. And in this mass of matter, the eye emerges - more eyes - that attract the viewer and like magnets suck him into "lakes" of color. 

"And at once I find the eye that is looking back at me: extraordinarily large, fixed and enquiring - writes Bianca Tosatti in the critical text in the catalog -; a vortex sucking me inward, amplifying the tremors of my mental terrain; an outward explosion of my existence whose forms it shakes. And so the work becomes a subject-gaze situated in the field of the Other, because it is the image that looks at the subject".

Suresh Prandi was born on June 9, 1998 in Bangalore (India), where he spent his early years with his parents. At the age of eight he was adopted by the Prandi family and moved to Campogalliano, a small village in the province of Modena, where he still lives. He regularly attended elementary, middle and high school, graduating from the professional institute of Correggio (Reggio Emilia) in “Services for Agriculture and Rural Development”. Thanks to his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo, Suresh Prandi first became passionate about football and then about gymnastics, developing a true cult for the body, around which all his days now revolve. In 2018 Suresh Prandi began his placement at the day center of the Nazareno cooperative in Carpi, in the province of Modena (an association for the reception, care and rehabilitation of people with disabilities), where he began to express himself through drawing. Noticing his natural talent and the benefits he derives from it in terms of relationships and personal well-being, in 2024 it was decided to permanently include him in Manolibera painting atelier, where he works every day. 

The artist often uses oil pastels to create a chromatic mosaic that almost entirely covers the previously created drawing; he is a master in the combination of color that never fades into the next shade but it is placed next to it as if the hues and combinations were innate. And speaking of “Landscape with Angel”, Bianca Tosatti writes: “The colour is approached in a circumspect and yet ambitious way; weighed and divided like the cones of pigment on an Indian market stall, arranged by a wise seller so that the emotional value of each one can be perceived”. 

MARONCELLI 12 GALLERY

Via Maroncelli, 12 – Milan

maroncelli12.it

Spirit and Spectres in Suresh's colour​​

Maroncelli 12 Gallery, Milan, May 28 – September 26, 2025

Nathalie Du Pasquier Exhibition @ Nivola Museum, Orani, Italy

Nathalie Du Pasquier

Volare Guardare Costruire

Museo Nivola, Orani

May 17 – September 14, 2025

Portrait of Nathalie Du Pasquier

Photo by Ilvio Gallo

Museo Nivola presents Volare Guardare Costruire (to fly, to look, to build), a site-specific project by Nathalie Du Pasquier, a French artist and designer based in Milan.

Conceived especially for the museum’s spaces, the exhibition takes the form of a retrospective dedicated to the artist’s painting production from her beginnings to the present day. At the same time, it is an environmental installation that merges painting, architecture, and design. The exhibition unfolds through a series of structures designed by the artist, transforming the museum into a space to walk through, explore, and inhabit.

The exhibition thus initiates a dialogue between the artist’s ephemeral architectures and the historical structure of the building – the former washhouse of Orani, now the beating heart of Museo Nivola.

Inside these “rooms” and on the walls of the museum are works created from the 1980s to today, which tell the story of the evolution of Du Pasquier’s visual language: a lexicon made of figuration and abstraction, in which human figures and the narrative dimension gradually give way to the theme of still lifes, made of simple and everyday objects, which delicately evoke the human presence, and then again to geometric shapes and abstract constructions. The whole is bathed in a midday light that gives the paintings a metaphysical air, almost as if we were in front of modern versions of Morandi’s canvases or, in other ways, of the purist ones of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant.

The title, Volare Guardare Costruire, refers to three phases of Nathalie Du Pasquier’s pictorial production. Volare (to fly) evokes the moment of detachment from the design of design objects towards the freer practice of painting. And it is perhaps no coincidence that many of the works of this phase present scenes seen from above, with a bird’s eye view, a symbol of the power of the imagination, of its ability to soar high and expand freely.

Guardare (to look) refers to a second phase, to the need to abandon purely imaginative scenes to dedicate oneself to a quiet and precise observation of reality, even of the most everyday and apparently insignificant objects, which instead reveal to an interested gaze, extraordinary forms, precious details and the ability to understand within oneself the complexity of existence. They are visions that the artist defines as “very silent and very still”, which invite one to rediscover the pleasure of the sensitive world through silent and attentive observation.

Dissatisfied, at times, with the sensible appearance of reality, Nathalie Du Pasquier finally dedicates herself to Costruire (to build), creating original structures, small three-dimensional abstract constructions that are then portrayed with the brush, brought back to the two-dimensional plane of her canvases. Thus, she triggers a complex dynamic between reality and representation, which is a wonderful metaphor for painting.

With this exhibition, the Nivola Museum confirms its commitment to promoting the dialogue between art, design and architecture, offering an immersion in the visionary world of an artist who continues to reinvent the rules of seeing and building.

Nathalie Du Pasquier (Bordeaux, 1957) moved to Milan in 1979. Co-founder of the Memphis collective, since the mid-1980s she has devoted herself mainly to painting, developing an unmistakable visual universe where formal research combines with a profound reflection on space and perception. Her works have been exhibited at Villa Noailles Hyères (Toulon, France), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, Denmark), GFZT Museum of Contemporary Art (Leipzig, Germany), Camden Arts Center (London), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna) and MACRO in Rome.

Curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, Luca Cheri

NIVOLA MUSEUM

MUSEO NIVOLA

Via Gonare 2 08026 Orani

museonivola.it

Typologien: Photography in 20th-Century Germany @ Fondazione Prada, Milan - Exhibition Curated by Suzanne Pfeffer

Typologien

Photography in 20th-Century Germany

Fondazione Prada, Milan

Through 14 July 2025

Fondazione Prada presents “Typologien,” an extensive study dedicated to 20th-century German photography, at its Milan venue. The exhibition, hosted within Podium, the central building of the Milan headquarters, is curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt.

The exhibition attempts to apply the principle of “typology,” which originated in 17th- and 18th-century botany to categorize and study plants, and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the 20th century. Paradoxically, the given formal principle allows for unexpected convergences of German artists spanning different generations and the manifestation of their individual approaches.

The exhibition path follows a typological rather than a chronological order, bringing together more than 600 photographic works by 25 established and lesser-known artists essential for recounting a century of German photography, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sibylle Bergemann, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Margit Emmrich, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Lotte Jacobi, Jochen Lempert, Simone Nieweg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Umbo (Otto Umbehr), and Marianne Wex. A system of suspended walls creates geometric partitions in the exhibition space, forming unexpected connections between artistic practices that differ from each other, but are united by a common principle or intention of classification.

As stated by Susanne Pfeffer, “Only through juxtaposition and direct comparison is it possible to find out what is individual and what is universal, what is normative or real. Differences are evidence of the abundance of nature and the imagination of humans: the fern, the cow, the human being, the ear; the bus stop, the water tower, the stereo system, the museum. The typological comparison allows differences and similarities to emerge and the specifics to be grasped. Unknown or previously unperceived things about nature, the animal, or the object, about place and time become visible and recognizable.”

In photography, employing typologies means affirming an equivalence between images and the absence of hierarchies in terms of represented subjects, motifs, genres, and sources. Despite this, typology remains a highly challenging and complex notion. It operates in a paradoxical regime: on the one hand, this approach can lead to a systematic recording of people and objects based on extreme objectivity; on the other hand, typology corresponds to an individual and arbitrary choice, revealing itself as a disturbing and potentially subversive act.

The hypothesis that photography plays a key role not only in fixing distinctive phenomena but also in organizing and classifying a plurality of visible manifestations remains a vital force in today’s artistic efforts to navigate the complexity of our social and cultural realities. With the spread of digital imagery and practices, the concept of typology continues to be questioned and re-defined by contemporary photographers and artists.

As underlined by Susanne Pfeffer, “The unique, the individual, seems to have been absorbed into a global mass, the universality of things is omnipresent. The Internet allows typologies to be created in a matter of seconds. And yet this is precisely when it seems important—to artists—to take a closer look.” As further explained by Pfeffer, “When the present seems to have abandoned the future, we need to observe the past more closely. When everything seems to be shouting at you and becoming increasingly brutal, it is important to take a quiet pause and use the silence to see and think clearly. When differences are not seen as something other, but turned into something that divides us, it is crucial to notice what we have in common. Typologies allow us to identify remarkable similarities and subtle differences.”

In the early 20th century, Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932) was one of the first artists to transfer the classification system used in botanical studies to photography. His vast and detailed plant atlas represented a foundational moment for German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). This artistic and photographic movement emerged in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic and promoted the importance of categories and distinctions and the remarkable ability of photography as a medium to explore the very idea of typology.

Another pioneering figure was August Sander (1876–1964), who published his photo book Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) in 1929, at the time excerpted from his landmark project Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century). Described by Walter Benjamin as a “training atlas” of physiognomic perception, Antlitz der Zeit was an ambitious attempt to portray the diversity and the structure of German society using class, gender, age, occupation, and social background as distinct categories of a rigid and neutral classification system. 

Both Karl Blossfeldt’s and August Sander’s typologies were fundamental for Bernd Becher (1931–2007) and Hilla Becher (1934–2015) when, at the end of the fifties, they began an enormous and lifelong documentation and preservation project of industrial architecture. In 1971, they described the “industrial constructions” as “objects, not motifs”. They stated that “the information we want to provide is only created through the sequence, through the juxtaposition of similar or different objects with the same function”. Their black-and-white monuments, or “anonymous sculptures”, isolated against a monochromatic sky, centered, framed in the same format and arranged in a block, became an essential reference for American and European Post-Minimalist and Conceptual artists. They also represented a rich heritage for younger generations of German artists and photographers, such as Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Candida Höfer (b. 1944), Simone Nieweg (b. 1962), Thomas Ruff (b. 1958) and Thomas Struth (b. 1954), who studied at the Academy in Düsseldorf in the class led by Bernd and Hilla Becher from 1976.

Hans-Peter Feldmann (1941–2023), internationally recognised for his fundamental contribution to conceptual art, traced a complementary trajectory in German photography. In his works, he documented everyday objects and historical events and combined deadpan humor with a systematic approach to accumulating, cataloguing, and rearranging elements of contemporary visual culture. In his series, he invented personal yet very political typologies and adopted a deliberate snapshot approach with a commercial aesthetic. For his work Alle Kleider einer Frau (All the Clothes of a Woman, 1975), he took 35mm-format photographs of underwear, hosiery, T-shirts, dresses, trousers, skirts, socks, and shoes, all hanging on hangers on the wall or laid on dark fabric. With his project Die Toten 1967–1993 (The Dead 1967–1993, 1996–98), he paid homage to individuals murdered in the context of the political and terroristic movements in Post-War Germany. As pointed out by Susanne Pfeffer, “With his typologies, he emphasized the equal value of all photographs, their image sources and motifs, and underscored the de-hierarchization inherent in every typology.”

In his apparently random collection of found, personal or pornographic images, press clippings, and historical photos of Nazi concentration camps, the Red Army Faction and German reunification, a “private album” named Atlas (1962 – present), Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) seemed to deny or challenge the very idea of typology. Instead, he took the principle of equivalence between images and their trivialization process to the limits, creating a jarring contrast and an acute awareness of a repressed collective memory.

In the seventies and eighties, in a dialectic relationship with the artistic lessons of the Bechers, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth progressively abandoned the radicalism and black-and-white purism of their professors. They explored the colorful dominance of banality in their series of individual or family portraits, monumental and detailed city views, and spectacular documentation of cultural or tourist sites, generating a plethora of contemporary and conflicting typologies.

In the late seventies and early eighties, multimedia artist Isa Genzken (b. 1948) engaged in a direct dialogue with the photographic medium. In 1979, she created a series entitled Hi-Fi that featured advertisements of avant-garde Japanese stereo equipment, organizing them in an imaginary commercial catalog. The second series entitled Ohr (Ear) (1980) depicted, in large-scale color close-ups, the ears of random women Genzken photographed on the streets of New York City. She transferred the traditional portrait genre to physiognomic detail and ironically investigating the absolute singularity and infinite individual differentiation the photographic portrait can record.

Typologien

Photography in 20th-Century Germany

Image courtesy of the Fondazione Pada

An illustrated book, published by Fondazione Prada and designed by Zak Group, accompanies the exhibition “Typologien: Photography in 20th-Century Germany”. It includes an introduction by Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione Prada, a text by the exhibition curator Susanne Pfeffer and three essays by renowned international art historians and curators Benjamin Buchloh, Tom Holert, and Renée Mussai.

FONDAZIONE PRADA, MILAN

Largo Isarco 2, 20139 Milano

www.fondazioneprada.org

Typologien: Photography in 20th-Century Germany @ Fondazione Prada, Milan, 3 April - 14 July 2025

Peter Mohall @ Luce Gallery, Turin - "Landskap" Exhibition of Landscape Paintings

Peter Mohall: Landskap

Luce Gallery, Turin

March 21 – April 25, 2025

Luce Gallery presents Landskap, an exhibition of paintings by Swedish born, Norway based, painter PETER MOHALL. This is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

As the Swedish lingual title implies, the exhibition thematic concern is with landscape painting. The coruscating landscapes of rural Scandinavian countryside captures the regional scenery, while the saturated imagery recalling the aesthetics of Post-impressionism, with embedded references to both regional painters like Helmer Osslund, Aleksi Gallen-Kallela and Willi Midelfart as well as idiomatic movements like Les Nabis, die Brücke, and Fauvism.

The specific material qualities of the traditional medium of choice, utilizing tempera grassa paint on jute canvas, along with a particular painting style, a sensitive brush handling and visual references, generates a distinct imagery that reveal a comprehension of the medium and it’s inherent art historical properties. Which is leading us to a tentative conclusion that the subject matter is subordinated by a conceptual inquiry into the medium.

The supporting evidence for this assumption comes in form of thick brush strokes sticked to the «window glass» of the illusionary window into the pictorial dimension. The brush strokes are «floating in the air» between us and the motif, causing our focus shift in and out between the pictorial dimension and the flat surface. The perceptual conflict destabilizes the narrative reading of the painting, leaving us with perceptual challenges searching for visual codes to decipher.

First thing we notice about the brush strokes are that they contain the colour index of the painting. Peter Mohall invites us into his artistic process by sharing the palette. A point of interest is the opportunity to study the change of optic values of a colour from isolation compared to inclusion within the context of surrounding colours in the motif.

An interesting insight about the process is that Peter Mohall has to calculate the numbers of colors to use in a painting in advance. Areas needs to be retained in order to properly attach the brush strokes directly onto the canvas. The brush strokes are often arranged as a grid, a note to the modernist method, or in alignment overlaying the motif.

Furthermore, the brush strokes are identical. Peter Mohall has developed a signature strategy utilizing cast brush strokes in an inquiry into a medium-specific investigation of the relationship between the painterly authentic and automation. First deployed in a formalistic setting on empty canvases, the cast brush strokes thematize the gesture alluding the fusion of two modernist strategies; the brush stroke as subject matter and repetition. Peter Mohall adapted the strategy using figuration as backdrops, innovating an imagery of complexity, multi-layered, with internal painterly discussions and perceptual challenges. A conflict between two image forms where traditional perception interacts with the implementation of modernist strategies.

PETER MOHALL (b. 1979, Löddeköpinge (SE), lives and works in Nesoddtangen (NO)) graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including solo shows with Luce Gallery, Turin, Nino Mier, Los Angeles, Koki Arts, Tokyo, Pablo’s Birthday, New York and QB Gallery Oslo. His work has been acquired by numerous collections such as Fondazione 107, Turin, Central Bank of Norway, Oslo; and JP Morgan Chase Collection among others, as well as public commissions in both Oslo and Drammen.

LUCE GALLERY

Largo Montebello, 40 - 10124 Torino

www.lucegallery.com

Terry Atkinson @ Galleria Six, Milan

Terry Atkinson

Galleria Six, Milan

12 April - 14 June 2025

TERRY ATKINSON

FRONTISPIECE

© Terry  Atkinson

Courtesy of Galleria Six, Milan

Galleria Six presents a solo exhibition by TERRY ATKINSON.

For his third exhibition at Galleria Six, a new cycle of works entitled FRONTISPIECE is presented and exhibited together with Terry Atkinson's works from the late 1970s and 1980s. A dialogue between a present and a past that comes alive again.

The initial elements of the new series of works, which is still ongoing, are two books. The first is From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics by Quentin Skinner, published in 2018. The second is Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, published in 1964. 

These two stimuli are quickly followed by a third, triggered by the fact that Terry Atkinson introduced a portrait of himself from 1964 as a recurring motif in some of the works in the series. 

"The works are a mix of certain what I consider to be relevant words and images relevant to the task in hand. The words are frontispiece, portal, threshold, hubris, and maybe some others to come as the series move on. The images , thus far, are photocopies of my two daughters when they were young on a visit to German concentration camp at Natzwiller-Struthof  in the Vosges, images from Goya, a portrait of myself, Hobbes’ frontispiece for Leviathan, and a number of other images.

I attempt to construct the works not least through resonating the words inscribed on the tableaux  - Portal, something you see through or view from; Threshold, something you cross; Hubris – in this case an attempt to maneouvre the concept of the artist as an extreme self-assured projection, the model of the artist as a self-confirming centre of truth.  And so on …"

Terry Atkinson April 2nd, 2025

TERRY ATKINSON (1939, Thurnscoe, UK). Lives and works in Leamington Spa. An English visual artist and theorist, in his long career he has challenged the traditional conception of aesthetics in art, criticising the conventions of artistic production and fruition. 

‘If the work I have made over the last 40 years,’ says Terry Atkinson, ’has one characteristic that runs through it, it is a concern to make a critique of art rather than a celebration of it.

After studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, he emigrated to New York in 1967 where he met minimalist, conceptual and land artists such as Sol LeWitt, Dan Graham, Carl Andre and Robert Smithson. In 1968 he founded the conceptual collective Art & Language together with Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge, together they exhibited at documenta 5 (1972) curated by Harald Szeemann. He left the group in 1974 to pursue a solo career. He exhibited in 1984 at the 41st Venice Art Biennale. In 1985 he was a finalist for the Turner Prize. 

GALLERIA SIX 

Piazzale Gabrio Piola, 5 - 20131 Milano 

www.galleriasix.it