From October 10 to November 30, 2025, the Complesso monumentale della Pilotta in Parma hosts the exhibition Bella figura. Italian Painting Today, curated by Camillo Langone. Promoted by the Ministry of Culture’s General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity and the Pilotta, the exhibition offers a journey through contemporary figurative painting, reaffirming the centrality of the human figure in the tradition and actuality of Italian art.
Set up in the Renaissance spaces of the Voltoni del Guazzatoio and freely accessible to the public, the exhibition brings together 44 figurative paintings by contemporary Italian artists, including Adriano Annino, Chiara Baima Poma, Chiara Calore, Omar Galliani, Daniele Galliano, Giovanni Gasparro, Ester Grossi, Giuliano Guatta, Miriana Lallo, Giulia Mangoni, Fulvia Mendini, Rocco Normanno, Rodolfo Papa, Mauro Reggio, Enrico Robusti, Lorenzo Tonda, Nicola Verlato and Daniele Vezzani. Each of them proposes a personal interpretation of Bella Figura, understood as an ideal of harmony, order and proportion that, in various forms, runs through Italian culture from the Renaissance to the present, generating an intense dialogue between past and present.
The exhibition is divided into two major sections, The Modern and The Eternal, to which are added the thematic nuclei of Portrait andSacred Art. The Modern brings together works that confront today’s reality, with its symbols and icons, destined to become a testimony of our time. The Eternal, on the other hand, gathers paintings that look to classicism, myth, religion and archetypes. Portrait brings together the works par excellence expressions of man, those that reproduce and interpret his appearance and individuality, placing him at the center of the work and his world, while Sacred Art reflects on the possibilities of a renewed dialogue between faith and art, in search of a balance between spirituality and aesthetic research.
All the works on display, recently created and in some cases created especially for the occasion, are rooted in the classical and Christian tradition, but at the same time offer themselves as a living expression of contemporaneity, in the themes, subjects and techniques used. The project is part of the Pilotta’s program of new acquisitions, which thus continues its collecting vocation - begun with the Farnese family - through the entry into the museum collections of some of the works presented in the exhibition.
"Bella figura. Italian Painting Today is a declaration of love addressed to beauty, its eternal truth and its living contemporaneity," says Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli. “What is particularly striking is the Italian-ness and intergenerational variety of the authors. It is a courageous and noble gaze turned to the present, because beauty is either perennial, and therefore current, or it is not; but it is also a gaze turned to the future, because it is persuaded by the hope that beauty still knows how to inspire new generations, and manifest itself in every time and at every crossroads of history.”
“The painters presented here,” explains Angelo Piero Cappello, Director General Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, “recover the figurative tradition with strength and originality, questioning how to represent the human being in our time. Their works dialogue with the long history of Italian portraiture, reinventing its codes and updating its languages, in a continuous balance between form and vision.”
“The paintings presented are all recent, several are very recent and some are even made ad hoc,” adds curator Camillo Langone. “Approaching them, one can feel the breath of the Spirit of Time. The list of invited artists, all Italians obviously living and working, is drawn up to offer, though without balancing, a variety of generations, sexes, styles. Since, and it is shown in the exhibition, one can make a good impression in a variety of ways, from the most realistic to the most geometric.”
“The exhibition invites us to open our eyes, feel volumes, colors and lines, and reason about the frontiers of national anthropocentric figurative art: a tradition of which the Pilotta offers fundamental past testimonies, in an abecedary of forms ranging from Antelami to Bocchi, through the eternity of Correggio,” stresses Stefano L’Occaso, Director of the Pilotta Monumental Complex.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Grafiche Step. Media partner Sky Arte.
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.
Tickets: Full 18 €, reduced groups 14 € (groups of adults 10-30 px), reduced 18 to 25 € 2 The ticket includes a visit to the museums of the Pilotta Monumental Complex (Archaeological Museum, Teatro Farnese, National Gallery, Palatina Library and Bodoni Museum).
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| An exhibition on contemporary figurative painting at the Pilotta in Parma |
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