Ferrara is preparing to host the exhibition Ladies and Gentlemen (1975-76) in spring 2026, an exhibition that traces the period when Andy Warhol first introduced his innovative vision of portraiture to Italy. The exhibition will be on view at Palazzo dei Diamanti from March 14 to July 19, 2026, curated by Chiara Vorrasi. The exhibition repurposes the original configuration of the event, offering a look at the transformation Warhol imprinted on the art of the time. The exhibition marks a departure from the usual iconic subjects of entertainment society, such as Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, and places hitherto anonymous figures at the center: African-American and Puerto Rican drag queens, whose images capture attention through a vivid and exuberant visual language. The portraits, with their intense colors and theatrical energy, anticipate aesthetics that will be central even in the third millennium, recounting complex and nuanced identities and themes still relevant today, such as the social construction of identity, multiculturalism and the influence of the media on individual perception.
Organized by the Ferrara Art Foundation and Ferrara City Council’s Galleries of Modern and Contemporary Art, with support from theAndy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the exhibition offers a journey through Warhol’s artistic production. More than 150 portraits including acrylics, drawings, silkscreens and Polaroids from public and private, European and American collections form the centerpiece of the exhibition, allowing us to observe the continuity and variations within Warholian portraiture. The choice of subjects and the variety of media employed highlight the dual ambition of the exhibition: to rediscover the iconic power of the original images and to verify the surprising topicality of Warhol’s artistic research, which as early as the 1970s addressed issues related to aesthetic manipulation and the construction of social identity.
The exhibition is divided into several sections, beginning with the Ladies and Gentlemen series, followed by a selection of portraits and self-portraits produced between the 1960s and 1980s. These include the famous reproductions of Marilyn Monroe, consolidating the star archetype, and the reinterpretation of Mao Tse-tung’s official iconography. The exhibition also includes images of figures such as Mick Jagger and Liza Minnelli, expressions of a theatrical and global sensuality, and portraits of Robert Mapplethorpe and Grace Jones, characterized by a fluid aesthetic that anticipates the digital age. The itinerary culminates in a room devoted to Warhol’s self-portraits, in which the artist explores the boundaries of his own identity, showing how portraiture can turn into a device for personal and social experimentation.
The exhibition project highlights Warhol’s radical reinvention of the portrait. The artist employed codes of mass communication, technological aesthetics and visual languages drawn from glam rock, camp culture and amateur images taken with a Polaroid camera. Cinematic elements and references to reality television help delineate a well-rounded portrait of the artist, his context and relationship with the public. The exhibition also offers the opportunity to view acrylic paintings never before exhibited in Italy and to compare the different media used by Warhol, including film footage and photographs, which restore the energy of the U.S. pop scene and the centrality of the artist in twentieth-century visual culture.
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| Ferrara celebrates Andy Warhol with re-release of Ladies and Gentlemen |
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