Gastone Novelli (1925-1968)
Venice, Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna

15 November 2025 – 1 March 2026

The exhibition marks the centenary of Gastone Novelli’s birth, offering a comprehensive survey of his creative trajectory through the most significant works held in Italian public and private collections. It also constitutes an important synthesis of recent scholarship, including the Catalogo generale delle opere di pittura e scultura published in 2011 by the Gastone Novelli Archive in collaboration with the Mart – Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, which had already devoted a major retrospective to the artist in 1999, following that organized in 1988 by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome.

Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Paola Bonani, in collaboration with the Gastone Novelli Archive in Rome, the exhibition originates from the significant donation to the civic collections of several works by the artist’s heirs.

The exhibition itinerary at Ca’ Pesaro, arranged across eight rooms, brings together around sixty works and focuses on the most intense phase of Novelli’s production (1957–1968). It spans from the informal experiments of the years of L’Esperienza Moderna – the journal founded with Achille Perilli – to the paintings in which he developed his distinctive fusion of visual and verbal language, and finally to the works of strong ethical and political resonance exhibited in his personal room at the 1968 Venice Biennale. Alongside his most celebrated masterpieces, the exhibition also features works once considered lost and never before displayed, accompanied by documentary materials that illuminate Novelli’s vibrant intellectual life, his close ties with the literary world, and his enduring friendships with fellow artists and writers.