From December 26, 2025 to June 21, 2026, Palazzo Reali in Lugano hosts Autoritratti dalla collezione 1928-2021, an exhibition that addresses the theme ofself-portraiture through a selection of more than twenty works from the collections of MASI - Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana. The exhibition project, curated by Cristina Sonderegger, brings together works created over nearly a century, bringing into dialogue different languages, media and approaches to self-representation.
The itinerary begins with the photographic experiments represented by the self-portraits of Ilse Bing and Florence Henri, central figures of modern European photography. The exhibition continues with works that expand the field of self-portraiture beyond the strictly photographic dimension. Documented performances by Marina Abramović and Gina Pane introduce a reflection on the body as a site of exposure and direct experience, while the performative gesture is configured as an act of radical self-representation. Another section of the itinerary is devoted to Urs Lüthi’s conceptual self-portraits, in which the artist uses his own image to interrogate roles, stereotypes and identity constructions. Alongside these works are works by Frank Horvat and Fiorenza Bassetti. Video language is represented by Silvano Repetto’s works, while Gian Paolo Minelli ’s self-shots reflect on the possibilities of the digital image and the relationship between author, device and representation. The presence of VALIE EXPORT completes the itinerary.
Taken as a whole, the exhibition returns an articulated panorama of the different ways in which female artists approached the theme of the self-portrait between 1928 and 2021. Far from the idea of a unified genre, the self-portrait emerges as a complex and layered field of research, in which identity, self-perception and relationship with the gaze of others are interwoven through different practices and media. Self-Portraits from the 1928-2021 Collection can be visited at Palazzo Reali, 10 Via Canova, Lugano, and offers an opportunity to delve into a significant part of MASI’s collections, highlighting the continuity and transformations of a central theme in contemporary art history.
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| Self-portraits from the MASI collection on display at the Palazzo Reali in Lugano |
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