From Oct. 16, 2025 to Jan. 24, 2026, CUBO, Unipol Group’s business museum, is hosting the exhibition Beverly Pepper. Space Outside. The exhibition, curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Marco Tonelli and organized in collaboration with the Fondazione Progetti Beverly Pepper in Todi, presents thirty-six works including sculptures, drawings, sketches, watercolors and sketchbooks, flanked by an extensive photographic and video collection documenting the artist’s career. The initiative takes the form of an in-depth study that highlights central issues in Pepper’s research: the relationship between art and the environment, the value of memory and the role of community. The body of works on display, dated between 1965 and 2018, returns an articulate look at the evolution of a language that has helped redefine contemporary sculpture, interweaving plastic forms, architecture and landscape.
Two monumental works part of the Unipol Group collection emerge at the center of the Bologna itinerary: Prisms (1967-1968, polished stainless steel, 197x110x75 cm) and Virgo Rectangle Twist (1967, polished stainless steel, 241x135x69 cm). Placed in the Porta Europa and Unipol Tower locations, respectively, the two sculptures mark a decisive phase in the artist’s language. In them Pepper defines a conception of the public work as a place of inclusion, participation and sharing, capable of transforming itself into a collective experience. The two main sculptures are flanked by design drawings and environmental studies, which document the creative process and indicate the continuous transition between scale and thought, as highlighted by Ilaria Bignotti in the exhibition catalog. It is a journey that highlights Pepper’s ability to translate ideas into plastic works and far-reaching interventions, in which art becomes lived space.
It was during the years of Prisms and Virgo that the artist’s interest in land art and in defining an alternative public art to the traditional monument matured. His approach focuses on the idea of the anti-monument, understood as a place of collective memory devoid of celebratory rhetoric. From this address comes the definition of Connective Art, an art that proposes itself as an environment and experience, capable of welcoming and protecting, of creating bonds between human beings and shared spaces. An important example of the vision isAmphisculpture, the theater Pepper donated to L’Aquila in 2018, conceived after the 2009 earthquake. On display in the exhibition is the project’s maquette, which testifies to the desire to transform art into an opportunity for rebirth and a place of encounter.
The work is part of the artist’s reflection on the concept of querencia, a term that indicates in Taurino Spanish the point in the bullring where the bull feels safe from the matador and which, in an extended sense, refers to a space of refuge and safety. Alongside the sculptures and design materials, an important role is given to the rich iconographic apparatus, which assumes autonomy as a visual narrative. Photographs and videos document the artist at different stages of her work: in the foundry, where she learned the techniques of casting going so far as to agree to be called George, or portrayed alongside her own works, in a continuous dialectic between individual and sculpture.
The Bologna exhibition thus makes it possible to retrace the salient stages of the career of Pepper, American by birth but linked to Italy since 1972, when she moved to Todi, where she remained until her death. Her sculpture, in its different stages, was configured as landscape, architecture and a form of collective participation, capable of interacting with natural and urban space. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog that includes texts by curators Ilaria Bignotti and Marco Tonelli, along with a contribution by Arianna Bettarelli, head of the archives of the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation. The volume takes an in-depth look at the artist’s poetics, providing critical tools to understand the originality of a language that combined material and social context.
Complementing the project is a study day on Nov. 27, 2025, sponsored by CUBO and dedicated to further exploring the artist’s journey. The meeting will be attended by Andrea Pinotti, Loris Cecchini, Marco Tonelli and Arianna Bettarelli, with Ilaria Bignotti moderating. An opportunity for discussion that will allow reflection on Pepper’s legacy and its relevance in the debate on public art and the relationship between work and community.
Hours Mon, 2 - 7 p.m. Tue - Fri, 9:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. Sat, 9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Sun closed.
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| Beverly Pepper in Bologna: the "Space Outside" exhibition at CUBO Unipol |
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