Ceroli Totale

The Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea celebrates Mario Ceroli with an evocative exhibition that traces the stages of the extraordinary career of one of the most innovative figures in Italian contemporary art. The exhibition presents to the public a selection of sculptures and installations created from the 1950s to the present day and drawn from the collections of the museum, Banca Ifis and the artist himself.

Curated by Renata Cristina Mazzantini, director of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, the exhibition brings together twenty works distributed across ten rooms. Famous masterpieces, such as “Ultima Cena” (The Last Supper, 1965), with the 12 apostles seated next to an empty place, “Primavera” (Spring, 1968), an homage to the Italian garden, and “La battaglia” (The Battle, 1978), a plastic complex inspired by Paolo Uccello’s Renaissance painting and dedicated to the memory of Pier Paolo Pasolini, dialogue with works presented to the public for the first time, such as “Sesto senso” (Sixth Sense, 1999, “Le chiacchiere” (The Chatter, 1989), “Tela di Penelope” (Penelope’s Canvas, 1992) and “Arpa birmana” (Burmese Harp, 1992). The works on display include also “Composizione” (Composition), one of his rare tree trunks pierced by nails, with which he won the Prize for Young Italian Sculpture at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in 1960, which acquired the work.

The artist conceived the exhibition as a work of art in itself, a large visual theatre in which each work, like a character on stage, is called upon to play a new role, in a permanent search for contemporaneity. Witnesses to the continuous renewal of his research are also the two new site-specific works, “La grande quercia” (The Great Oak) and “Le ceneri” (The Ashes), created as part of the “Artista alla GNAMC” initiative, of which Mario Ceroli is the protagonist for 2025. The “visiting artists” program, conceived with the formula “one year, one artist, one room”, includes a series of meetings with the public, scholars and students from the academies and faculties of Valle Giulia.