The Lorenzo Puglisi personal exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova is open to the public from 1 February to 10 March 2025. The exhibition is curated by Massimo Pirotti and Alberto Mazzacchera. Set in the boundless beauty of the museum, Puglisi’s works have been placed in some of the extraordinary rooms of the Palazzo Ducale such as the Sala dei Cavalli, the Sala del Crogiolo, the Camerino dei Cesari and the Sala dei Mesi, creating an open and direct dialogue with the architecture, frescoes and paintings that bear witness to the splendour of the Gonzaga family.
The exhibition, which is the most comprehensive of the artist’s work ever shown in a public space, continues on the first floor in the three rooms of the Rustica with fifteen medium and large-sized works. In the spaces on the ground floor overlooking the Cortile della Cavallerizza, the artist will confront the Portrait of Marco Alvise Bernardo, a precious painting by Francesco Hayez (Venice 1791 – Milan 1882), closing a hypothetical time span that ranges from Leonardo’s Cenacolo, through Tiziano’s Pietà and the masterpieces of other great masters, to the great 19th-century painter, also author of the frescoes in the Teatro Sociale in Mantova.
In this exhibition, which brings together a total of over 50 oil paintings on canvas and panel created by Puglisi over the last seven years, the spirituality of the past is evoked through the reinvention of painting, in an investigation that starts from historical tradition to try to reveal what is most intimate and hidden beyond the visible.
Author of a strong and courageous semantics, Puglisi has long and carefully looked at the great protagonists of the history of Painting, maintaining a natural connection with the Masters who preceded him and depicting, through a surprising iconography, his gaze on the reality of the human being.