Sarzana’s Fortezza Firmafede is preparing to welcome one of the most controversial and recognizable artists on the contemporary scene, Giuseppe Veneziano (Mazzarino, 1971), with the major anthology Anthology, scheduled from December 13, 2025 to May 3, 2026. The exhibition, curated by art critic Luca Nannipieri, brings together more than seventy works by Giuseppe Veneziano, a leading figure in Italian New Pop, and is one of the largest and most articulate exhibitions ever dedicated to the Mazzarino-born painter and sculptor. It is a project that aims to retrace twenty-five years of activity and investigate a creative path that has never ceased to arouse attention, debates and contrasting reactions, confirming a central role in public debate and contemporary visual language.
Veneziano, considered among the main Italian interpreters of pop culture declined in a provocative key, has built over the years a production rooted in an immediately recognizable imagery. His works mix references to the history of art, politics, current events and the media universe, resulting in images that challenge the figurative tradition and at the same time observe it closely, transforming it into a new terrain for storytelling. The Sarzana exhibition fits into this context and expands it, offering a comprehensive reading that traverses key moments of his research, from his earliest trials to his most recent works.
The exhibition welcomes paintings, sculptures and large-scale interventions, some of which have fueled a heated critical and media debate over the years, partly because of their provocative nature or their ability to touch on issues perceived as sensitive. Some works have been the subject of censorship and have attracted the attention of a diverse audience, including international observers, figures from the worlds of fashion, television, journalism and criticism. Among those who have spoken publicly on Veneziano’s works appear figures such as Oriana Fallaci, Oliviero Toscani, Nobel laureate Dario Fo, Giampiero Mughini, Philippe Daverio and Vittorio Sgarbi, evidence of a cultural impact that has transcended the traditional perimeter of visual art to enter social discourse.
The works on display at Fortress Firmafede include some of the artist’s most celebrated and discussed titles. Novecento, for example, is part of that nucleus of works that investigate the relationship with the century that has just passed, between cultural memories and political tensions. The Massacre of the Innocents , on the other hand, is part of the production in which Veneziano uses biblical and iconographic citation to comment on current issues, while Almost Friends rereads links and contradictions in the contemporary imagination. Not to be missed is Selfie, the work depicting the famous girl with the pearl earring reinterpreted in the time of social networks and chosen as the cover image of the exhibition catalog. The exhibition is completed with the most recent production, in which new variations on the dialogue between past and present, between icons of mass culture and references to art history emerge.
The Firmafede Fortress, which belongs to the MIC - Regional Museums Directorate of Liguria, is the place chosen to host an installation designed to restore breadth and breath to the entire body of works. It is organized by Confcommercio La Spezia, which serves as the representative of Rete Imprese La Spezia in the current semester on behalf of the main trade associations in the area, including Confcommercio, Confesercenti, CNA and Confartigianato. The project also enjoys the support and patronage of the City of Sarzana and several institutional and private partners, including media partner Finestre sull’Arte, a leading publication in the Italian cultural information scene.
The decision to mount such a wide-ranging and articulated exhibition also stems from the desire to include it in Sarzana’s bid to become Capital of Culture 2028. The initiative, supported by a memorandum of understanding signed by trade associations, aims to enhance the city’s role as a growing cultural hub, capable of proposing projects that involve the entire community. In this framework, the arrival of Giuseppe Veneziano’s works represents not only an exhibition event, but a piece within a broader strategy dedicated to the promotion of Sarzana and its artistic potential.
Anthology is part of a curatorial tradition that looks at contemporary art as an opportunity for direct dialogue with the public. Veneziano’s works, with their immediate yet layered language, help create a path capable of relating forms, symbols and narratives of the present with visual codes from different eras. The artist uses citation as a narrative tool and as a key to interpreting our time, constructing a language that draws from twentieth-century myths, pop culture icons, figurative traditions and phenomena related to the digital world.
The anthological character of the exhibition allows us to grasp the transformations of his production, from the earliest works more related to direct irony to the more complex and symbolic ones. The exhibition thus becomes not only a chronological repertory, but a cross-reading of the themes that have fueled the artist’s research. The image, for Veneziano, is never a mere formal exercise, but a tool to interrogate society and its mechanisms, to observe the tensions that run through mass culture, to compare the past with the present through a constant rereading of the visual models that art history has delivered to the contemporary imagination.
The exhibition opens Fridays from 10 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets: full 12 euros, reduced 8 euros (young people aged 6 to 25, university students with ID, seniors over 65, the disabled, Sarzana residents, teachers, military and law enforcement, MIC and Sarzana municipality staff), family kit 3 people € 24.00, family kit 4 people € 32.00, free for children under 6, journalists, tour guides, ICOM members, accompanying disabled people. Information: www.fortezzafirmafede.it
The artist Veneziano writes, in the catalog published by Sagep publishers, “Often my works are visual traps. It can happen to be in front of an evocative, colorful, captivating image, while the subject is a crime scene. The moment you represent something, you cannot limit yourself to painting only the beautiful, the good, the funny: that would be a partial view of the world you live in. Through my works I try to represent the contextuality of opposite dimensions, such as good and evil.”
“In the Western free world, censorship is, after all, a show of gratitude,” explains Luca Nannipieri. “You censor because it scares you, and it scares you because, underneath, you love it. Love has forms of suppression that indifference does not know. At the Firmafede Fortress, with the support of the Sarzana Administration - which I thank for fully supporting this initiative - we will transform two floors of the monument into a journey inside the most unconfessed and at the same time playful drives of our soul. Giuseppe Veneziano’s works have a direct, clear and desacralizing language: through the very particular and never taken for granted rereadings of political and historical figures such as Trump, Putin, Berlusconi, Pope Francis, of fairy tales and cartoons such as Mickey Mouse and Snow White, and of unexpected rereadings of Renaissance masterpieces that Veneziano loves so much, we will find ourselves on a journey into current events and art history that is also a journey inside our modesty, our shame, our obsessions. After all, art, even when it is encircled, opens wide geographies of our soul that we thought we were silencing.”
“Giuseppe Veneziano’s anthological exhibition at the Firmafede Fortress marks a new step in the enhancement of this extraordinary historical space,” says Mayor Cristina Ponzanelli. “The Fortress is today a living place of research and encounter. Veneziano’s often provocative works may not be shared individually, but they broaden the reading of our time and fuel contemporary debate, confirming the Firmafede as a leading exhibition center. We offer visitors an experience that interweaves historical beauty and the power of ideas.”
"Giuseppe Veneziano’sAnthology represents a new stage in Sarzana’s cultural journey: more than seventy works that interweave topicality, memory and social critique," says Sarzana Culture Councillor Giorgio Borrini. “Luca Nannipieri’s curatorship highlights the artist’s ability to use provocation to read the present. After the success of the exhibition dedicated to Giorgio de Chirico, this exhibition confirms Fortezza Firmafede as an ideal place for generational comparisons and to stimulate contemporary debate. After hosting and then producing exhibitions of national interest, today the Fortress is a fully contemporary space: a path of growth that is part of the candidacy for Capital of Culture, thanks to the partners who believe in this vision.”
“I would like to express the deep satisfaction of the associations for conceiving the exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Veneziano, which will soon be open for visits to the Firmafede Fortress,” says Alessandro Pontremoli, president of Confcommercio Sarzana, representing Rete Imprese. “We also thank the City of Sarzana for supporting the project. We are proud to strengthen, through this initiative, the cultural path we have undertaken together with the city. Events of this level bring prestige to Sarzana and enhance our commitment to combining art, territory and business. They also represent an important opportunity for deseasonalization, attracting a conscious and quality tourism. The exhibition fits fully into the path of Sarzana’s candidacy as Italian Capital of Culture 2028. Rete Imprese will continue to invest in initiatives that enrich the cultural life of the community.”
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| The controversial works of Giuseppe Veneziano at the Firmafede Fortress with "Anthology" |
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