Spazio Metafisico (2023), Ugo Nespolo, Engravings & prints on Cardboard, 90x160 cm
Key points
Expert curator : Grazia Quaroni, art historian and director of collections at the Fondation Cartier.
A tribute to Italian pop : bright colors, humor, everyday myths (Vespa, Fiat, urban landscapes).
Diversity of mediums : painting, engraving, photography, sculpture, embroidery, digital art.
Iconic and emerging artists : from Mario Schifano to Marco Lodola, including Juno, Donatella Mora and Redrumstudio.
A curator between rigor and intuition
An Italian art critic and art historian based in Paris, Grazia Quaroni occupies a unique place in the international artistic landscape. As director of the collections of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain , she has contributed to more than forty world-renowned exhibitions, from Seoul to Buenos Aires, via Shanghai and Milan. Her role at the Triennale Milano , which she directs in partnership with the Fondation Cartier, extends this vocation as a bridge between cultures, disciplines and generations of artists. Her approach combines intellectual rigor and intuitive sensitivity, an attention to the social and cultural context of the works as much as to their formal and poetic power.
Learn more about Grazia Quaroni
A pop vision, between memory and contemporaneity
BAUHAUS CELEBRATION (2024), Antonella Preti, Acrylic on Fabric, 68x90 cm
With POP MADE IN ITALY FOREVER , Grazia Quaroni celebrates a profoundly Italian artistic vein: that of a reinvented pop culture , born in the 1960s around figures like Mario Schifano , Ugo Nespolo and Marco Lodola . Far from the ironic coldness of American pop, this transalpine version favors the warmth of the material, the play of contrasts, the sensuality of shapes and colors.
This selection pays homage to a collective spirit: that of artists who draw on design, cinema, advertising and comics to reinterpret everyday myths. Vespas, Fiat 500s, urban shop windows and saturated landscapes become familiar icons, revisited with humor and tenderness. Quaroni highlights this typically Italian ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary , to celebrate beauty in the banal, to give the popular a poetic intensity.
Il gatto di Parma (2020), Marco Arduini, Acrylic on Canvas, 50x50 cm
Artists, a palette of energies
The selection brings together several generations of artists, united by a shared desire to experiment.
Mario Schifano , a pioneer of Italian pop, inscribes color in the memory of the landscape, where abstraction and emotion meet. Ugo Nespolo , always faithful to his taste for visual storytelling and the play of images, explores the theatrical dimension of the gaze and the frame. Marco Lodola , an emblematic figure of the contemporary scene, transforms light and color into joyful, festive and immediate material—a pure celebration of Italian modernity.
Around these greats, a more recent generation is renewing the pop tradition by confronting it with other mediums. Marco Arduini revisits the automobile myth and domestic nostalgia through humorous scenes. Donatella Mora introduces a critical and dystopian dimension, playing on the opposition between abundance and catastrophe. Antonella Preti , inspired by the Bauhaus, weaves a link between design, architecture and color, between rigor and lyricism.
Juno , with her patient embroidery, inscribes the thread like a vibrant design, while Tamara Marino explores in sculpture the metamorphosis of the female body, between interiority and rebirth.
Party Night. (2024), Marco Lodola, Engravings & Prints on Cardboard, 100x100 cm
Photography also plays a key role: Redrumstudio captures fragments of a globalized world, between silence and urban tension, while Roberto Brancolini plays with light to transform reality into a chromatic illusion. Manuel Di Chiara brings the mechanical and poetic power of the port world into the field of pop, where industry becomes the subject of art. Finally, Melissa Jane Wauchope (Damson) brings an urban and graffiti touch, where the text becomes manifest, and Marco Teatro or Antonio Graziano extend this narrative vein through drawing and aerial view, between graphic memory and geometric reverie.
An Italian pop that is still alive
Through this constellation of artists, POP MADE IN ITALY FOREVER demonstrates that Italian pop is not a fixed style but an attitude : a curious, free, vibrant outlook that embraces the world without denying its cultural roots. From the light of cinema to the elegance of design, from artisanal gesture to urban vitality, this selection creates a landscape where past and present are in constant dialogue.
Under the gaze of Grazia Quaroni, this pop becomes a mirror of the contemporary - an art that speaks to everyone, that plays with symbols and emotions, and that affirms, again and again, that in Italy, color is a form of thought .
FAQ
Why is this selection called “POP MADE IN ITALY FOREVER”?
Because it celebrates the unique spirit of Italian pop, which transforms popular culture into a timeless, colorful and daring artistic language.
What types of works are presented?
The selection covers a broad spectrum: painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, embroidery, and digital art. Each medium is explored for its ability to tell, surprise, and move.
Which artists are included in the selection?
Historical figures like Mario Schifano , Ugo Nespolo , Marco Lodola , but also contemporary artists like Marco Arduini , Donatella Mora , Antonella Preti , Juno , Tamara Marino , Melissa Jane Wauchope (Damson) and Redrumstudio .
What distinguishes Italian pop from American pop?
She favors the warmth of color, the play of shapes, and poetic narration. Far from cold American irony, she blends humor, sensuality, and a sense of everyday life.
Nicolas Sarazin
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