Curated by Margherita de Pilati and Ivan Quaroni, the exhibition shows how, over the past forty years, much of Italian art has worked seemingly “against its own time,” forging an irregular, intermittent, or deliberately anachronistic relationship with history. Since the 1980s, many artists have explored fragmented concepts of time. In our digital, hyper-present era, this sense of suspension has become a widespread condition: works that don’t fully belong to either yesterday or today inhabit a liminal space where visual memory is constantly being reassembled, interrupted, or slowed down.

Through returns to painting, iconographic revivals, and temporal suspensions, these works carve out a space where past and present dynamically coexist, offering new perspectives on recent artistic production.

After the age of Conceptual Art, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the Transavantgarde movement bring painting and figuration back to centre stage. Artists like Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Francesco Clemente, and Mimmo Paladino reintroduced narrative, myth, and the archaic—not as an act of nostalgia, but as a way to reactivate a rich repertoire of imagery embedded in Italy’s cultural memory.

This shift was followed by the Anachronists, who engaged even more directly with the past—embracing form, classical composition, and painting that feels as though it belongs to another era. Among the prominent figures in this movement are Stefano Di Stasio, Omar Galliani, Paola Gandolfi, and the outsider Carlo Maria Mariani.

The exhibition moves on to “postmodern” currents, featuring the Nuovi-nuovi—well-known names such as Salvo, Luigi Ontani, and Aldo Mondino—whose works paved the way for the New Futurists. The latter group is defined by a pop sensibility that draws on advertising, design, and mass culture, as seen in the work of Marco Lodola, Umberto Postal, Innocente, and Plumcake. With painting, objects, and immersive installations, Neo-Futurism distinguishes itself through an immediate, ironic, and self-aware approach—mirroring a world shaped by media and the constant flow of signs. Instead of explaining reality, these works move through it, turning everyday codes into visual experiences that continue to question the role of art in a society already saturated with images.

Amid these shifts in style and imagery, many artists are in dialogue with history—such as Paolo Ventura and Max Rohr—or with the concept of time itself, as seen in the work of Andrea Mastrovito and Giulia Andreani. Others draw on sacred iconography—a defining feature of Nicola Samorì’s art—or explore myth, as Francesco Vezzoli does.

Traditional genres provide another point of comparison: Guglielmo Castelli gravitates toward portraiture, while Nicola Nannini, Fulvio di Piazza and Andrea di Marco prefer landscape.

Art history also shapes the work of artists under 35—such as Giuditta Branconi, Chiara Calore, and Martina Cinotti—whose paintings bring the exhibition to a close.

 

Artisti in the exhibition
Alberto Abate, Gianantonio Abate, Giulia Andreani, Diana Aparo, Ubaldo Bartolini, Giuditta Branconi, Dario Brevi, Chiara Calore, Arduino Cantafora, Guglielmo Castelli, Gianni Cella, Sandro Chia, Martina Cinotti, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Vanni Cuoghi, Bruno d’Arcevia, Paolo De Biasi, Andrea Di Marco, Fulvio Di Piazza, Stefano Di Stasio, Christian Fogarolli, Omar Galliani, Paola Gandolfi, Mimmo Germanà, Jacopo Ginanneschi, Innocente, Marcello Jori, Marco Lodola, Carlo Maria Mariani, Andrea Mastrovito, Aldo Mondino, Gian Marco Montesano, Nicola Nannini, Luigi Ontani, Mimmo Paladino, Michele Parisi, Plumcake, Umberto Postal, Andrea Ravo Mattoni, Max Rohr, Salvo, Nicola Samorì, Paolo Ventura, Nicola Verlato, Francesco Vezzoli, Massimiliano Zaffino.