The retrospective dedicated to Mario Schifano at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma opens with an immersive spatial construction that immediately frames the curatorial approach. In the central Rotunda, the reconstruction of the dining room created in 1968 for the Agnelli residence introduces a total environment in which starry skies and sequences of palm trees define a suspended dimension between memory and artifice. Here, decoration becomes a mental space: the landscape, far from any naturalistic evocation, appears as an already mediated image, within which a biographical trace – linked to the artist’s Libyan origins -surfaces without ever being explicitly declared.
Mario Schifano, exhibition view at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, 2026, photo Alberto Novelli © Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, courtesy Palazzo Esposizioni Roma
From this threshold, the exhibition unfolds through a chronological structure that allows Schifano’s practice to be read through layers and recurrences. The opening rooms, devoted to the late 1950s Informal works, present a painting still rooted in materiality and gesture, yet already oriented toward the image. The shift to the early 1960s monochromes – supported by the interest of the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend – marks a decisive transformation: the surface becomes a field of suspension, a space in which the image is not negated but held in a state of latency. By 1962, however, this suspension is already disrupted by new stimuli. Works such as Elemento per grande paesaggio and Tempo moderno introduce a framing logic that anticipates a crucial shift: the image never appears directly, but always through mediation. It is as if the landscape were already inscribed within a screen, prefiguring the artist’s later engagement with the televisual flow.
Mario Schifano, exhibition view at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, 2026, photo Alberto Novelli © Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, courtesy Palazzo Esposizioni Roma
In this respect, the dialogue with Pop Art and figures such as Andy Warhol remains only partially relevant. While Warhol radicalizes repetition and the neutrality of gesture, Schifano sustains an unresolved tension between painting and image, between industrial sign and manual intervention. Commercial logos, as well as the so-called anemic landscapes, are never mere appropriations but rather forms of interference: already-consumed images reactivated by painting without being restored to any original function. In this sense, Schifano’s work resonates more closely with that of Tano Festa, where the image is always traversed by a critical distance. The works inspired by Futurism, filtered through colored plexiglass panels, further intensify this condition of displacement. Historical reference does not translate into citation but into refraction: movement and speed – central to the avant-garde – are reconfigured through a sensibility already shaped by technical reproducibility.
Mario Schifano, exhibition view at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, 2026, photo Alberto Novelli © Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, courtesy Palazzo Esposizioni Roma
The theoretical core of the exhibition emerges in the rooms devoted to the 1970s, where painting enters into a direct relationship with electronic imagery. The emulsion works and TV Landscapes mark a transition from a painting that represents to one that translates: the television set becomes an operative condition capable of redefining the temporality of vision. Schifano intervenes in the flow by isolating fragments, slowing sequences, and transforming continuity into interruption. This logic extends to his film practice, presented through a selection of moving images and photographic materials related to projects such as “Human Lab – Laboratorio umano”. His journeys in the United States – documenting sites such as NASA and the Pentagon – are not mere records but components of a broader inquiry into the relationship between image, technology, and power. The artist operates within a complex media system, anticipating modes of post-production and image reprocessing that would become central only decades later.
Mario Schifano, exhibition view at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, 2026, photo Alberto Novelli © Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, courtesy Palazzo Esposizioni Roma
The final rooms, dedicated to the 1980s and 1990s, present a more materially dense painting, yet still deeply engaged with contemporaneity. Current events filter into the pictorial surface, confirming the persistence of a practice that never relinquishes its engagement with the present. Supported by a rigorous scholarly framework and a catalogue published by Electa, the exhibition stands out for both its scope and its precision, restoring Schifano’s international dimension without yielding to celebratory narratives. The chronological structure, rather than flattening the work, functions as an open framework through which recurrences and disjunctions become visible. What ultimately emerges is not so much a linear development as a mode of operation grounded in liminality: between painting and technical image, between gesture and reproduction, between linear time and simultaneity. In this sense, the retrospective at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma does not close the discourse on Schifano, but reactivates it, returning the work to its fundamentally problematic and still urgent condition.
Info:
Mario Schifano
17.03 – 12.07.2026
Curated by Daniela Lancioni
Exhibition promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, produced and organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d’Italia; Main Partner Eni with the support of the Silvano Toti Foundation
Palazzo Esposizioni Roma
Via Nazionale, 194 – Roma
www.palazzoesposizioniroma.it
Micol Di Veroli (Rome, 1976) is an art historian, critic and independent curator. She is a member of AICA – International Association of Art Critics. Since 2010 she has been curator of Glocal Project Consulting and collaborates with several international museums creating projects aimed at promoting and supporting Italian art abroad.
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