The exhibition of Mario Schifano at Palazzo Esposizioni

Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and Intesa Sanpaolo present at Palazzo Esposizioni, from March 17 to July 12, 2026, a major retrospective dedicated to Mario Schifano (Homs 1934 – Rome 1998), one of the most significant and widely recognized figures in Italian art of the second half of the twentieth century.

The exhibition is promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, produced and organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d’Italia, with Eni as main partner and the support of Fondazione Silvano Toti.

Mario Schifano, The Collector’s Wife’s Numerous Childbirth, 1984, enamel and acrylic on canvas and frame, 235 × 375 cm. Valsecchi Collection. Photo: Giorgio Benni. © MARIO SCHIFANO, by SIAE © Archivio Mario Schifano.

“The tender and deeply sensitive core of his soul is his passion for painting,” wrote critic and poet Cesare Vivaldi in 1963 about the young Schifano. It is to this essential, undeniable, and widely shared appreciation that the exhibition seeks to give resonance, bringing together over one hundred of the artist’s most acclaimed and representative works, drawn from Italian and international public and private collections, including a significant group from the Intesa Sanpaolo art collection.

Curated by Daniela Lancioni, curator at Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, the exhibition retraces Schifano’s artistic biography through his major visual inventions: from the informal, material-based works of the 1950s to the first monochromes of 1960; from the phase inaugurated by the 1963 exhibition Tutto at Galleria Odyssia in Rome to the new iconographies mediated by photographic language and references to art history (from the Futurists to Malevič); from the Paesaggi TV and cinema to the large-scale paintings of the 1980s and the works of the 1990s, in which the artist’s sensitivity to social issues becomes more explicit.

A figure of absolute importance, Mario Schifano moved through the Italian art scene with a trajectory marked by constant innovation, engaging with—and often anticipating—the key developments of the second half of the twentieth century. His work reflects a continuous desire to regenerate painting by exploring new ways of seeing and thinking through different media, including painting, photography, and film, all of which are represented in the exhibition.

The exhibition unfolds in the rotunda and the seven large galleries on the main floor of Palazzo Esposizioni. Following an introductory biographical section—featuring photographs and archival materials—the works are presented in chronological order, highlighting themes, formal choices, techniques, and conceptual premises that flow from one work into another, constantly renewing themselves. Particular attention is given to the first emergence of key ideas, the most well-known cycles, and some lesser-known works.

Where possible, works are displayed in groups, reflecting the artist’s practice of painting in homogeneous series, creating a dialogue between thematic unity and fully autonomous variations. Among the highlights are the reconstruction of the dining room painted by the artist in 1968 for a Roman home, installed in the rotunda of Palazzo Esposizioni, and the complete body of films and short films created by Schifano.

An entire gallery is dedicated to the monochromes of 1960 and the first works on metropolitan landscapes. The films will be screened throughout the duration of the exhibition in the Cinema Hall—free of charge—according to a scheduled program, while within the exhibition visitors can view Schifano’s short films alongside a selection of audiovisual documents about the artist.

With this retrospective, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma offers the public the opportunity to explore in depth the life and work of Mario Schifano, highlighting his inventions, experiments, and transformations, and restoring the complexity of his practice and his never-ideological relationship with contemporaneity. The exhibition is part of Palazzo Esposizioni’s ongoing commitment to studying and promoting figures and movements that have significantly shaped Italian visual culture since the mid-twentieth century, with particular—though not exclusive—attention to the city of Rome.

The initiative is part of a broader research program dedicated to key figures and moments in Roman and Italian art from the 1950s to the 1970s, which also includes recent anthological exhibitions devoted to Cesare Tacchi, Jim Dine, Don McCullin, Boris Mikhailov, and Carla Accardi.