ROME.- Titled "Forma e Frammento," this is the first retrospective in Italy dedicated to Sveva Caetani (Rome, 1917 – Vernon, Canada, 1994), on view at Spazio Extra MAXXI from October 3, 2025, to January 4, 2026.

The exhibition, curated by Chiara Ianeselli, features over 200 works, documents, and archival materials, reconstructing the artistic and personal journey of this understudied figure and restoring the complexity and depth of her story.

The exhibition explores the many facets of her work —painterly, literary, and spiritual— combining fragments of her life and imagination. Alongside the artistic production, biographical, sometimes dramatic, details emerge as essential keys to understanding the deep roots of her expression.

Sveva was the daughter of Leone Caetani, one of the leading Islamic scholars of the twentieth century, and a descendant of the noble and ancient Caetani family—renowned for its role in Italian politics and culture; their ancestor Benedetto Caetani, elected Pope Boniface VIII, was the initiator of the Jubilee in 1300. Forced to spend about 25 years in isolation in her home in Vernon, Canada, Sveva transformed her pursuit of knowledge, through in depth and extensive reading, into a tool for resistance and rebirth.

At the heart of the exhibition is Recapitulation, a cycle of 47 watercolours that Caetani began in 1975, and worked on over the following 14 years: a recapitulation, a visionary journey retracing her life’s experiences and now arriving at MAXXI, in Rome and in Italy, fulfilling a wish expressed by the artist but unfortunately never realised in her lifetime.

The exhibition is under the patronage of the Embassy of Canada in Italy and is the result of a collaboration between the Caetani Center and the Museum and Archives of Vernon in Canada, the Fondazione Leone Caetani – Accademia dei Lincei, the Fondazione Camillo Caetani, the Fondazione Roffredo Caetani, with loans also from the Vernon Public Art Gallery and the Fabbrica di San Pietro.

The project also includes works by Carlo Benvenuto (Stresa, 1966) and Houda Kabbaj
(Casablanca, 1985), created in dialogue with the exhibition.

“I am Sveva Caetani, the only daughter of Leone Caetani, who was Duke of Sermoneta, Italy and the second-to-last head of the thousand-year-old Caetani family. My father was also a famous orientalist and Islamic scholar, as well as the author of the work Annali dell’Islam (Annals of Islam). He was my idol—I admired his intelligence, character, integrity, vast knowledge, and inexhaustible enthusiasm for human thought and creativity. My paintings, entitled Recapitulation, are dedicated to his memory.” -- Sveva Caetani

Sveva Caetani: Forma e Frammento

RECAPITULATION

In 1975, Sveva embarked on a project that would occupy her for the next fourteen years: “The idea of bringing together all the experiences and judgements of my life in a visionary journey, embodying my father as a mentor and guide.” She called this endeavour a Recapitulation—a cycle she envisioned as “a journey, as all life is. Because journeys, from Homer to Virgil, from Dante to Cervantes, from Bunyan to Swift, are self-revelations. They are what the traveller finds, whether as a wonder or a monster, and which they must, as Dante says, learn to see clearly and then leave behind. Dante, more than anyone else, was my model.”

With extraordinary dedication, Sveva created a structured series of watercolours on paper. The series is divided into nine sections, described by Roman numerals: I – Inception; II – The Burrows of Nightmare; III – Transition One; IV – Le Morte Stagioni; V – Transition Two; VI – Areas of Fate; VII – Great Themes for a Great Journey; VIII – A Litany; IX – Journey’s End. Within these sections are 47 experiences, each corresponding to an individual work.

The works draw from a remarkable variety of iconographic sources: personal memories, magazines, geographical atlases, other artworks, poems, anecdotes, and current events. The journey begins with a departure—an image of train carriages winding through the mountains—and continues with a fundamental encounter with Sveva’s father, Leone Caetani. Together, they face existential trials and challenges, moving through both intimate and universal moments. Often, multiple events occur in the same scene, a narrative style reminiscent of the medieval period.

The Alberta Art Foundation in Edmonton housed the still-incomplete series from 1985. Despite being confined to a wheelchair with hands deformed by arthritis, Sveva heroically completed the final painting in 1989, dedicating the following years to promoting her work.

The works of Recapitulation were published in the volume Recapitulation: A Journey in 1995, the year following Sveva’s death. They are accompanied by texts, sometimes poems, written in three different languages—reflections that contextualize or enrich the experience of the image.

For the first time in history, the complete series is presented in its entirety.