MILAN.- The extensive retrospective dedicated to Italian artist Pino Pascali, curated by Mark Godfrey, will be on view at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue from tomorrow, 28 March, until 23 September 2024.

Curator Mark Godfrey and artist Peter Fischli will meet the public in occasion of a conversation at Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard, on Sunday 14 April at 4 PM. Following the talk, the documentary Pino (2020) by Walter Fasano will be screened.

The exhibition is divided into four sections, each presenting a unique perspective on Pascali’s work, and unfolds through three buildings of the Milan venue: the Podium, the Nord and the Sud galleries. The set design, conceived by 2x4, includes forty-nine works by Pino Pascali from Italian and international museums and distinguished private collections; nine artworks by prominent post-war artists; selected photographs portraying Pascali with his works and a video.

The first section looks at the way Pascali approached his solo exhibitions between 1965 and 1968, creating imaginative environments rather than just selections of works from his studio. The second part shows how he made strategic contributions to important group shows in these years. This section also includes works by other artists who exhibited alongside him. The third section examines the way he performed with his sculptures in photographs taken by Claudio Abate, Andrea Taverna, and Ugo Mulas, and how these photographs suggested imaginative ways of approaching his works. The fourth section looks at Pascali’s natural and industrial materials understanding where he got them from, what they were used for in commerce, which other artists were also using them, and what has happened to them over time. Together these four angles on Pascali’s work help demonstrate why, despite this brief career, he remains so important to contemporary artists.

Pino Pascali (1935-1968) contributed to significant developments in the Italian and international post-war art scene. This exhibition aims to examine the innovative scope of Pascali’s work, particularly his sculpture, which, over the last five decades, has had a substantial impact on several generations of artists and critics and continues to attract the growing attention of an international audience.

As Mark Godfrey writes in his exhibition catalog essay, “Pascali explored the relationship of sculpture and stage props, and contrasted sculpture with functional objects. Works that looked from a distance like readymades revealed themselves close-up to be constructed from found materials. Pascali thought about what a ‘fake’ or ‘feigned’ sculpture could be. He titled pieces as if they were solid masses, winking to his audiences who knew they were empty volumes. He used the natural elements of earth and water alongside construction materials like Eternit fiber cement panels and divided his seas and fields into units with repeated measurements. Pascali brought new consumer products and synthetic fabrics to the studio to fashion animals, traps, and bridges. There is no doubt whatsoever as to the complexity of his approach to sculpture, and yet the genius and originality of his contribution lies somewhere else. Pascali is important today because he was an ‘exhibitionist’. […] Pascali recognized that the postwar artist had to devote as much of their energies to exhibition-making as to refining their work in the studio.”

An illustrated book, designed by Joseph Logan and published by Fondazione Prada, will accompany “Pino Pascali”. The publication will include the exhibition views and will feature an introduction by Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione Prada, an essay by the curator Mark Godfrey, texts by international writers, art historians and curators Valérie Da Costa, Michele D’Aurizio, Eva Fabbris, Pia Gottschaller, Teresa Kittler and artist Peter Fischli, as well as reprinted interviews and essays by art critics.