The exhibitions to see in February in Italy
From Bruno Munari in Verona to the great photographers of the 20th century in Turin
G-Club
February 2nd, 2024
February 2nd, 2024
Eclectic designers, painters, history-making photographers, experimental projects, ... there is a possible choice for every taste and mood. The month of February is saturated with interesting events, including exhibitions dedicated to great protagonists of art and lesser-known names. It is a journey that travels all over Italy and goes from Turin with the exciting and iconic photographs of Pellegrino, Mulas, Capa and Taro to Salerno with the works of the Japanese Yumi Karasumaru, from Verona with the large monographic exhibition dedicated to Bruno Munari to Naples with the Bronzi di San Casciano, from Milan with the eclectic work of Tiger Tateishi to Rome with the exhibition that explores sex work and gender issues.
Here are the exhibitions to see in February in Italy.
Mimmo Paladino - Bologna
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Arte Fiera, the Fondazione Palazzo Boncompagni dedicates an exhibition to Mimmo Paladino, who returns to exhibit in Bologna after many years, a city with which he has always had close ties. Curated by Silvia Evangelisti with Paladino himself, the exhibition features about twenty important works, including large paintings and sculptures, displayed in four main rooms, highlighting the artist's poetic and eclectic approach. Throughout his career, Paladino has successfully explored various creative languages, including writing and theatrical scenography. Welcoming visitors inside the covered Loggia are two tall and hieratic figures of Warriors and the seven ideogram characters of Breath from 1995, and a large Bronze Helmet from 1998 embossed with 4 arcane signs; while in the center of the Papal Audience Hall, there will be a monumental installation of thirteen black horses. Inside the palace's rooms, the exhibition continues with Paladino's paintings, including a new series of six Black Madonnas.
Title: Mimmo Paladino in the Pope's Palace
When: from February 1 to April 7, 2024
Where: Palazzo Boncompagni, Bologna
Sex Work and Gender Issues at MACRO - Rome
Titled Trivial, the exhibition, open at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (MACRO) from February 9 to May 12, 2024, showcases the results of the collaboration between Pauline Curnier Jardin and the Feel Good Cooperative collective, founded in Rome in 2020 by the French artist herself. The collective consists of a group of sex workers from Colombia and their allies, including the photographer and sex worker Alexandra Lopez and the architect and researcher Serena Olcuire. The exhibition presents itself as a theatrical set, designed to explore the art of joy and well-being through performance, addressing themes such as gender identity, migration issues, legacies of colonialism, and modes of self-representation and self-determination with irony. The visual journey, including videos, stops at a balcony, a bed, a traffic light, the outskirts of the city, a visit to Pope Benedict XVI after his death, staging both the public dimension of sex work and the domestic one.
Title: Trivial
When: from February 9 to May 12, 2024
Where: MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome), Rome
Pellegrino, Mulas, Capa, Taro - Turin
From February 14 to April 14, 2024, at CAMERA Turin, three new appointments with photography are scheduled. It begins with a selection of about thirty photographs, the only remaining documents telling the story of the extraordinary graffiti decoration of the atrium of Palazzina Mayer in Milan, commissioned by Studio BBPR to Saul Steinberg in 1961. Ugo Mulas, a young photographer, documented the work upon completion, but it was destroyed in 1997 during the building's renovation. The exhibition Michele Pellegrino. Photographs 1967-2023, organized by Camera and the Cassa di Risparmio di Cuneo Foundation, curated by Barbara Bergaglio with text by Mario Calabresi, offers visitors a brief anthology of the entire creative path of the Piedmontese artist. The over 50 images transport viewers among mountains, rural life, and the faces of his land. Lastly, there is Robert Capa and Gerda Taro: Photography, Love, War, an exhibition open until June 2, 2024, telling the professional and emotional relationship between Capa and Taro, tragically interrupted by the photographer's death in Spain in 1937.
When: from February 14 to April 14, 2024
Where: Camera, Italian Center for Photography, Turin
The Bronzes of San Casciano - Naples
After the first exhibition last spring at the Quirinale, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) welcomes the bronze statues of San Casciano. These are new finds currently undergoing restoration in the MANN laboratories, adding to numerous other bronze statues, votive offerings, and thousands of coins discovered in the Etruscan and Roman thermal sanctuary of Bagno Grande in San Casciano dei Bagni. These precious artifacts allow the reconstruction of rituals and cults of deities venerated in the Campania region and can be admired from February 15 to June 30, 2024.
Title: The Gods Return. The Bronzes of San Casciano
When: from February 15 to June 30, 2024
Where: MANN, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Naples
Tiger Tateishi - Milan
On January 25, the Tommaso Calabro Gallery in Milan inaugurated the new space in Corso Italia with Tiger Tateishi. A painter, mangaka, illustrator, and ceramist, the versatile Japanese artist uniquely reinterprets symbols of Japanese and Chinese culture, incorporating Western artistic influences that deeply fascinated him, such as Pop Art, Anti-Art, Cubism, Surrealism, and Metaphysics. The exhibition unfolds in three rooms and presents a selection of Tateishi's works ranging from paintings to works on paper created between the '60s and '70s, the period of the artist's stay in Milan.
Title: Tiger Tateishi
When: from January 26 to March 23, 2024
Where: Tommaso Calabro Gallery, Milan
Eva Krampen Kosloski - Milan
On January 18, the Memorial of the Shoah in Milan inaugurated the exhibition After Images, a project in collaboration with the Centro Primo Levi in New York, telling the story of the Einstein Mazzetti family. Through the photographs of Eva Krampen Kosloski, visitors are transported back in time to August 3, 1944, when the story of this family, marked by the Shoah and the Second World War, intersected with that of the Jewish people, Waldensian groups, and partisans who found themselves together in a corner of Tuscany. Speaking about the exhibition, Krampen Koslovski said: "This work is about me and my way of immersing myself in the present in what was my mother's and aunt's life in the past. On the other hand, I think that the opportunity to exhibit this project is a way to make known the history of this family and the massacre so that the crimes of Nazi fascism are not forgotten. For this reason, exhibiting at the Memorial of the Shoah, a place dedicated to 'memory,' has significant meaning for me. Furthermore, the Einsteins had a strong connection with Milan. Not only did Albert Einstein's family live in this city, but Robert, as a young man, attended Parini high school here and later returned to Milan, where he lived and worked before moving to Rome."
Title: After Images
When: from January 18 to February 25, 2024
Where: Memorial of the Shoah, Milan
Yumi Karasumaru - Salerno
The Paola Verrengia Gallery in Salerno hosts Facing Histories 2023 by Yumi Karasumaru until November 25, 2024. Since the 1990s, the artist's research has developed in parallel between painting and performance, with a keen focus on the relationship between the present and the past of her home country, Japan. The exhibition project summarizes the main themes that have characterized her journey in recent years, telling the story and spirit of a people suspended between tradition and the future, in crisis due to modernization and westernization of customs. The attention of visitors will be drawn to her paintings, which originate from photographic images, often taken by the artist herself, featuring portraits of family and adolescents encountered on the streets of Tokyo.
Title: Facing Histories
When: until November 25, 2024
Where: Paola Verrengia Gallery, Salerno
Annika Ström / Monika Romstein - Celle Ligure
Until March 29, 2024, for Appuntamento con l’Artista, the residency project conceived by Paolo Palmieri and Maria Antonietta Collu, the spaces of Palmieri Contemporary host the works of Monica Romstein and Annika Ström, two artists belonging to the same generation but with totally different paths. The common ground? Painting. The former prefers textual works and a multidisciplinary approach to research, while Monika Romstein focuses mainly on the watercolor technique, producing a series of works that she defines as "psycho-emotive topographies."
Title: Annika Ström / Monika Romstein
When: until March 29, 2024
Where: Palmieri Contemporary, Celle Ligure
Bruno Munari - Verona
The Eataly Art House in Verona dedicates a major exhibition to Bruno Munari, one of the great protagonists of Italian culture in the 20th century. The over 130 works on display until March 31, 2024, explore the different phases of his career, highlighting his experimental creativity and eclecticism. An artist, designer, writer, and curator, Munari continues to inspire generations of creatives worldwide, and a glance at his works reflecting Futurist influences to Dadaist elements and experiments with shapes and colors makes the reason clear.
Title: Bruno Munari. La leggerezza dell’arte
When: until March 31, 2024
Where: Eataly Art House, Verona
