Valerio Adami. Painter of Ideas
July 17 – September 22, 2024
Palazzo Reale, Milan
Tornabuoni Art is pleased to participate in the exhibition “Valerio Adami. Painter of Ideas” through the loan of three works by the Bolognese painter.
Curated by Marco Meneguzzo, the exhibition celebrates sixty-five years of Valerio Adami’s artistic exploration. This anthological presentation is organized by Palazzo Reale in collaboration with the Valerio Adami Archive, and offers an in-depth view of Adami’s career, showcasing the evolution of his practice.
Valerio Adami perfectly embodies the idea of an international artist open to all influences derived from other cultures, their literature, philosophy, and music. His paintings are characterized by their large format and strong visual impact, which has sometimes led to his association with the Pop genre. However, beyond the immediately accessible imagery, lies a profound narrative. Adami’s works are rich with sophisticated visual metaphors and encapsulate philosophical, literary, and mythological concepts, reflecting the evolution of European and Western thought.
The foundational myths of European culture, its authors, and their stories have become the almost exclusive subjects of his work. This concentrated focus, over the years, has lead him to engage with some of the foremost thinkers and writers of the 20th century, including Octavio Paz, Italo Calvino, Jacques Derrida, Luciano Berio, Antonio Tabucchi, and Jean-François Lyotard.
Although Adami is known for the vibrant colors of his narratives, drawing is the true key to understanding his work, because it allows one to fully grasp the relationship between idea, subject, story, and word, which then explodes into painting. A “painter of ideas,” as the subtitle of the exhibition describes him, Adami shows through his work that one can be both an artist and an intellectual.
The exhibition retraces the artist’s production, in chronological order, with some notable variations. The first rooms display works from his early days up until the seventies, while the fourth room is arranged typologically, featuring portraits Adami has realized over the decades of the “noble fathers” he chose as examples of life and art. The subsequent rooms are dedicated to the last four decades of the artist’s career, which are intentionally predominant in the exhibition. They build on the exhibition held in 1986 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which was then entirely transferred to Palazzo Reale in Milan that same year. Enriching the display are Adami’s most recent works—an “expressionist counterpoint” of sorts to his carefully measured and calculated figurative style.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog and will be open at Palazzo Reale until September 22, 2024.
