SHANGHAI.- Prada presents the exhibition “Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto,” with the support of Fondazione Prada. The exhibition will be on view from 20 March to 15 June 2025 at Prada Rong Zhai, the historic 1918 residence in Shanghai restored by Prada and reopened in 2017. The curatorial vision by Sook-Kyung Lee, Director of the Whitworth, part of the University of Manchester, has been complemented by the scientific advice of Fondazione Lucio Fontana and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto.
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For the first time Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) and Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933), two prominent figures of the post-war Italian and international art scene, are put in dialogue with one another revealing their respective approaches to the matter and the conceptual dimension of art, their exploration of alternative performative spaces, and the presence of the metaphysical in each of their practices. The exhibition gathers 26 works from the late 1940s onward which underline their search for new forms of expression and the rejection of materials, methods, and subjects perceived as the paradigm of the past. The show explores furthermore their approaches to overcome painting restrictions and use materials drawn from the world beyond fine art. The three-dimensionality of their artistic objects is another focus of the exhibition, accompanied by a reflection on the performative aspect of their practices.
As stated by curator Sook-Kyung Lee, “Fontana’s and Pistoletto’s interests in rejecting the existing paradigm of art and seeking new forms of expression persisted in their respective oeuvres. This exhibition aims to create a dialogue between the pair, emphasizing the direction they shared in their production while alluding to inevitable differences in their practices.”
As Michelangelo Pistoletto recalls, “I knew Lucio Fontana, we were friends, we developed a dialogue on our work and its relationship to art history, to which we both contributed at different moments. The first time I saw his work was at the ‘Arte in vetrina’ exhibition in Turin in 1953. […] After my encounter with Fontana, I started looking for my own identity. I did so using a mirror, by means of self-portraiture. But a self-portrait cannot be created without a mirror and soon the mirror became the central element in my personal and new perspective.”
The exhibition explores the complementary and partly divergent ways in which the two artists overcome the two-dimensional limits of the pictorial surface. Concetto spaziale (Spatial Concept, 1949–50) along with Concetto spaziale (1961), exhibited at Prada Rong Zhai, present the essence of Fontana’s investigation and bear two of the emblematic and revolutionary gestures of his research, the holes, executed from 1949 onwards, and the slashes. In these canvases the silver paint expands the traditional limits of paintings, reaching a dimension that is not representation but evocation. Following this vision, the artist extends his explorations by including glass-paste inlays as he did in All’alba Venezia era tutta d’argento (At dawn Venice was completely silver, 1961), part of a series of works dedicated to the city, reminding the reflections of the Venetian lagoon. These three silver paintings continue to challenge the two-dimensionality of the canvas and creates a new dimension: a conceptual space.
In 1960, Michelangelo Pistoletto held his first solo exhibition in Turin, intensely exploring his own identity through the Autoritratti (Self-portraits) series. “Mirroring” includes works such as Uomo di schiena (Man seen from behind, 1961), part of Il presente series, where the artist paints his own figure on a black background made reflective by a thick layer of transparent paint, and Figura umana (Human figure, 1962) part of the series Quadri specchianti (Mirror paintings), in which polished stainless steel replaces a traditional painting technique for the first time. In both artworks, the human figure is portrayed with its back turned to the viewer, overcoming the conventional approach to portraits and dissolving the boundaries between the artwork and the viewer.
This exhibition additionally focuses on the three-dimensionality and the performative aspects of Fontana’s and Pistoletto’s practices. Fontana, who was born as a sculptor and only in the late 1940s approached the dimension of the painting, conceived the representation through the force of a gesture that impressed the traces of a physical action. This attitude is evident in the iconic series Nature (Natures, 1959-60), geoid sculptures in terracotta, cast in bronze, that refer to a cosmic imaginary. The same idea of a dimension of the action is echoed in the series of Teatrini (Little Theatres, 1965), where the wooden frame creates a sort of theatrical setting in which forms can perform.
In late 1965 and early 1966, Pistoletto produced and exhibited a new group of works in his studio-home, to which he gave the title Oggetti in meno (Minus objects). Taking the dimension of the time of the event as a starting point for the works, each of which differed from the others as though together they formed a collective exhibition, the Oggetti in meno ran counter to the doctrine that an artwork should reflect an artist’s recognizable style, like a commercial brand.
The metaphysical dimension is a central element in the works of both artists. A new boundary of existence is represented in Fontana’s works on paper and paper on canvas denominated Ambiente spaziale (Spatial Environment, 1948-49) and Concetto spaziale (1950), where he used blots and globular forms to suggest galaxies and nebulae. In doing so, as underlined by Luca Massimo Barbero in his text written for this exhibition, “Fontana epitomizes in pure symbology the philosophy of Spatialism—a visionary faith in the infinite, in the immensity of galaxies, and, above all, in human intelligence, which, in those years, was making Space its new frontier, even in the sphere of art.”
In his series Terzo Paradiso (2003), Michelangelo Pistoletto conceived a new sign of infinity formed by three circles instead of the traditional two, to symbolize the passage to a new era in history, and a new human condition. With these works, the artist invites us to reflect on the reconciliation between nature and artifice and champions a sustainable balance between the natural environment and technological progress.
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