Giuseppe Chiari 1926-2026. Partitura per un museo

Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Mario Chiari

May 29 – September 27, 2026

Opening: Thursday, May 28, 2026, at 6:00 PM

Installation view Giuseppe Chiari 1926-2026. Partitura per un museo. Courtesy MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna Photo by Ornella De Carlo

Bologna, May 27, 2026 – From May 29 to September 27, 2026, MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, part of the Settore Musei Civici of Comune di Bologna, presents the exhibition Giuseppe Chiari 1926-2026. Partitura per un museo in the Sala delle Ciminiere. Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Mario Chiari, the exhibition marks the centenary of the artist’s birth (Florence, September 26, 1926 – Florence, May 9, 2007). Its objective is to provide an organic critical interpretation of one of the most significant and multifaceted figures in the landscape of late twentieth-century Italian art.

The exhibition project, supported by PAC2025 - Piano per l'Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, represents the first comprehensive retrospective of Giuseppe Chiari’s work within a public institution. It distinguishes itself through a curatorial framework that proposes an articulate and cross-disciplinary investigation, transcending the conventional logic of presentation by homogeneous thematic groups.

Within this perspective, Chiari’s figure is historically contextualized starting from the 1960s and 1970s and re-examined in light of his relationships with the Fluxus movement and other contemporary avant-garde practices. His positioning within these contexts is, however, defined by a substantial autonomy: a participation that cannot be fully assimilated, resulting in a critical traversal of artistic currents.

The cornerstone of the exhibition investigates the crucial transition from music to the visual arts. Through a trajectory originating from his scores of the 1950s, the viewer witnesses a redefinition of musical language in an "expanded key", oriented towards sonic and performative practices. In this process, the musical instrument is de-functionalized and re-semanticized, or played in a non-prescriptive manner through the use of elements such as water, stones, and light.

Welcoming the public to the exhibition is the work La musica è facile [Music is Easy], created in 1972, presented at the Galleria Martano in Turin in 1976, and acquired by MAMbo thanks to the PAC – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea of the Ministero della Cultura: a textual intervention that amplifies and reactivates Chiari’s reflection on the accessible, process-oriented, and de-hierarchized nature of the musical experience.

Giuseppe Chiari, I crepitacoli, 1969. Indian ink on tracing paper, 6 sheets. 53 x 36.2 cm each. Courtesy Carla Pellegrini Heirs. Photo by Ornella De Carlo

At the center of the Sala delle Ciminiere, the core of the exhibition features twelve prepared pianos. The exhibition display, designed by the architecture studio Parasite 2.0, configures the space as an immersive environment in which the pianos manifest as sculptural presences. 

The itinerary continues with a section dedicated to musical notation which, initially composed by the artist on staves, subsequently reflects Chiari’s experimentation with non-canonical methods of playing instruments. The methods for playing are written in the form of texts, diagrams and drawings that bear witness to a sensory and exploratory investigation of sound, utilizing the raw matter of the musical instrument alongside non-canonical objects such as water, light, hair, chairs and architectural environments. 

Another core group consists of the celebrated canceled scores: works in which the musical code, subjected to practices of erasure and negation, radically challenges the status and function of traditional notation.

In the internal gallery, the exhibition explores a further development of Chiari’s research which, beginning in the 1970s, places the word at the center in its full conceptual autonomy, liberated from any instructional function. Among the works presented are emblematic statements, including the famous Art is Easy (1984) – the only work already included in the MAMbo collection prior to the recent acquisitions – and 120 pagine [120 Pages], an installation originally presented at the Galleria Schema in Florence. This piece is composed of dozens of photocopies of pages taken in part from one of the artist's notebooks, upon which typewritten words and phrases stand out; their succession presents itself as a heterogeneous flow of annotations ranging from visual, gestural, and sonic suggestions, in a game of references that ideally retraces the artist's scores, statements and other works.Furthermore, this core group establishes an ideal dialogue with other exhibition histories of the museum, notably the recent exhibition John Giorno: The Performative Word, which highlighted the continuity and convergences between performative poetry and conceptual experimentation.

The exhibition itinerary includes a vast selection of video works, curated by Cosetta Saba, Professor of Film Analysis and Audiovisual Practices in Media Art at the Università di Udine (DIUM). In constant dialogue with the physical works, these contributions illustrate the artist’s reflection on processuality and performativity, interacting with the expressive potential of the videographic medium. The audiovisual showcase allows for a deeper exploration of the temporal and relational dimensions of Chiari’s work, offering an exhaustive perspective on his media experimentation and the centrality of the gesture.

Giuseppe Chiari, La musica è facile, 1972. Ink on paper, 15 sheets 70 x 50 cm each. Work acquired by MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna with the support of PAC2025 - Piano per l'Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Photo by Ornella De Carlo

An entire room of the exhibition space is dedicated to a biographical section, curated by Stefano Cavaliero, with graphic design by D+ studio, conceived to contextualize Giuseppe Chiari within the landscape of the second half of the twentieth century. Through reproductions of documents, photographs and archival materials from the Archivio Giuseppe e Victoria Chiari di Mario Chiari, along with a detailed timeline, the artist's career is reconstructed, restoring the historical and documentary value of his work.

Accompanying the exhibition is an editorial project (Edizioni MAMbo), designed by D+ studio, dedicated to the artist. The bilingual Italian and English volume includes installation views, essays, and in-depth analytical entries authored by Lorenzo Balbi, Gabriele Bonomo, Carlotta Castellani, Stefano Cavaliero, Livia De Pinto, Marco Giovenale, Anna Cestelli Guidi, Claudio Musso, Parasite 2.0, Francesca Pola and Elena Colzi, Cosetta Saba, Desdemona Ventroni and Uliana Zanetti.

In conjunction with the exhibition, MAMbo, in collaboration with AngelicA | Centro di Ricerca Musicale and the Fondazione Bonotto, presents a cycle of three concerts featuring the music of Giuseppe Chiari. The first will take place during the exhibition opening on Thursday, May 28, 2026, at 7:00 PM, featuring pianist Reinier van Houdt performing Giuseppe Chiari’s Intervalli (1950 - 1956). The second and third concerts are scheduled for Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 5:00 PM with Agnese Toniutti and at 7:00 PM with Chiara Saccone & Deborah Walker (program details to be finalized).

The exhibition is part of Bologna Estate 2026, the calendar of activities promoted and coordinated by the Comune di Bologna and the Città metropolitana di Bologna - Territorio Turistico Bologna-Modena.