Mangano Galleria d’Arte in Cremona presents, from Feb. 14 to May 9, 2026, RiSorridimi, a two-person exhibition by Maurizio Arcangeli and Clara Bonfiglio, two prominent figures of the Italian artistic season of the 1980s, a period characterized by the renewed synthesis of memory, concept and image. The opening is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 14, at 6 p.m., in the presence of the artists.
Curated by Gianluca Mangano and accompanied by an extensive critical text by the curator himself, the exhibition was born as a pas de deux, a dialogue between two coeval and complementary poetics. Arcangeli, among the leading interpreters of Analytical Medialism, presents historical and recent works, from conceptual works to punctuations that reproduce the rhythm and structure of the painting, to more recent works that explore the relationships between language, space and perception. Bonfiglio, the only female artist associated with New Futurism, exhibits works such as Ti sorrido (1984) along with installations and urban objects that investigate the relationship between image, identity and mass media, characterized by an ironic and urban gaze. Although coming from distinct movements, the two artists share a common tension toward contemporaneity, albeit declined through opposite but converging modes. The exhibition thus highlights the attempt to strike a balance between content and form, thought and image, lightness and depth, smiling and questioning.
“The greatness of artists is measured in their ability to express the dynamics of their time,” writes Gianluca Mangano. Bonfiglio and Arcangeli, born in 1959, approach contemporaneity through different genetic lenses: she organizes the whole with the breadth of a wide-angle lens, he focuses on detail with the precision of a microscope. It is from this oscillation that their balance, human and artistic, is born."
“...I don’t recall what we said to each other when Maurizio introduced us,” points out curator Gianluca Mangano, “but that feminine fierceness was not new to me, it was the moment when I understood that Arcangeli’s energy is also in balance with another aura, as powerful as Bonfiglio’s. There are several pairs of artists who have marked Western culture: Dali and Gala; Frida and Rivera; Christo and Jeanne-Claude; Krasner and Pollock... Abramovich and Ulay... There are rivers of literature to document them. A year after the celebration at the Museo Civico in Viadana, it is now up to the Mangano Gallery to witness the work of a prestigious art couple through an unforgettable pas de deux. An exhibition aimed at highlighting the meeting points, above differences, between the protagonists of two distinct but coeval art movements. Born in 1959, Clara and Maurizio are two enigmatic scorpions who started from substantially different realities, to land simultaneously in the mythical Italian art history of the 1980s. That period masterfully described by critic Renato Barilli in which ”the two opposing drives appeared to elide each other: “...the environmentalism of Arte Povera and the revivalist spirit of the movements linked to citation.” The scenario of an internationalized art, devoid of a dominant tendency but rather aimed at reconciling the seriousness of content with the pleasantness of form, (like ’duty’ to ’pleasure’), is the one to which Arcangeli and Bonfiglio look out from the national balcony."
Maurizio Arcangeli (Montecosaro, MC, 1959) studied at the Florence Academy and in Bologna under Concetto Pozzati, developing research that combines conceptual language and technical rigor. Among the main exponents of Analytical Medialism, he has exhibited since the 1980s in institutional and private contexts, consolidating a poetics focused on the relationship between sign, image and perception.
Clara Bonfiglio (Milan, 1959) trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and, while still very young, joined the Nuovo Futurismo group led by Luciano Inga-Pin at the Il Diagramma gallery. Since the decade of the 1980s she has exhibited in Italian galleries and institutions, developing a poetics that combines urban objects, media imagery and contemporary irony.
 |
| Cremona, at Mangano's the exhibition on Arcangeli and Bonfiglio, protagonists of the 1980s |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
IT
FR
DE
ES
CN