With The Endless Diagram, opening on November 29, Galleria P420 dedicates a new in-depth exhibition to Laura Grisi—one that promises to redefine the reading of her work.
Curated by Marco Scotini, the show marks a pivotal chapter in the reconstruction of the artist’s trajectory, thanks to the recent discovery—within the Grisi Archive—of a group of works created between 1961 and 1965 that have never been exhibited until now. This precious core of material allows for a radically new perspective on the early career of an artist long acknowledged as one of the most original figures in Italian art of the late twentieth century.
Long before critics linked her almost exclusively to Italian Pop Art, Laura Grisi (Rhodes, 1939 – Rome, 2017) had already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to absorb and rework the international artistic languages of her time. The works from the early 1960s—now shown again for the first time in sixty years—reveal a surprising synthesis of the consumerist imagery of Pop, optical perception studies, the modular structures of Minimal Art, and the emerging interest in the performative and process-based practices that would later fuel Arte Povera.
This was a moment in which the consumer society was expanding—and simultaneously beginning to crack. Artists oscillated between fascination with modernity and rejection of its alienating drift. Grisi intercepted this dual movement early on: on one side appropriating objects, signs, and images from everyday life; on the other, embedding reflections on the role of the viewer, the relationship between technology and perception, and the possibility of turning the artistic experience into a mental and sensory process.
P420’s exhibition project places these early works in dialogue with selected pieces from the 1970s, the period in which Grisi developed her Natural Elements series—installations that artificially reproduce atmospheric phenomena such as rain, wind, or shifting sand. Here, nature is not merely imitated but recreated as a perceptual, mental, and technological device: an approach that unmistakably defines the uniqueness of her practice, always suspended between science and sensation, between artifice and archetype.
The Endless Diagram is therefore not simply a retrospective, but a critical act of recomposition. P420 continues its long-term commitment to rediscovering Grisi’s work, offering a complete and multilayered reading of an artistic practice that anticipated many issues central to contemporary discussions: the dematerialization of the image, the relationship between technology and nature, and the immersive dimension of artistic experience.
Sixty years after her earliest exhibitions, the force of Laura Grisi’s work feels more relevant than ever: an endless diagram capable of renewing itself continuously and restoring to art its vocation to question—and transform—the real.
P420
Via Azzo Gardino, 9, 40122 Bologna
Date
29 novembre 2025 - 24 gennaio 2026
