The Drawing Hall space in Bergamo hosts Salon Kitty by Francesco De Grandi

The Drawing Hall, an independent space dedicated to research on contemporary Italian drawing in Grassobbio (Bergamo), announces its 2026 exhibition program with the exhibition Salon Kitty, a solo show by Francesco De Grandi curated by Gabriele Lorenzoni, scheduled from June 13 to July 11. The second proposal of the year, scheduled for the fall, will be dedicated to Claudia Losi curated by Leonardo Regano. With these two exhibitions, the space reaches its twelfth exhibition project since its foundation, consolidating a programming oriented to contemporary drawing and capable of progressively involving an audience composed of artists, curators, practitioners and a stable component of the local community.

The Drawing Hall was born from the initiative of Walter Carrera, Marco Marcassoli and Andrea Mastrovito as an autonomous platform dedicated to drawing and its contemporary declinations. The programming has developed over time through projects that have gradually broadened its scope, maintaining drawing as a center of investigation and as a tool for critical reading of visual practices.

Francesco De Grandi’s exhibition starts from a reflection on the relationship between image, desire and representation, putting the language of drawing in tension with some narrative and visual structures of erotic cinema. Salon Kitty recalls the work of Tinto Brass, set in the context of the redefinition of eroticism in 1970s cinema, a phase in which filmic language also takes on a critical function against systems of power. Within this framework, the exhibition project proposes an interpretation of drawing as an autonomous practice with respect to the construction of a linear story.

In De Grandi’s work, drawing is interpreted as a device that insists on the relationship between impulse and control, between desire and fulfillment. The image is presented as a process in continuous transformation. In this perspective, the erotic dimension is understood as a structural component of the visual language, as an operative mode of the sign. The reference to erotic cinema becomes a tool to interrogate the relationship between visibility and power.

The exhibition path is articulated through different devices that highlight the temporal and unstable nature of the sign. The leporellos take the form of continuous montages, configuring themselves as moving archives that refuse the closure of the single work. The drawings are presented as traces of an activity that is not interrupted in a definitive form. The interventions made directly on the walls introduce an additional dimension of precariousness, as they are destined to disappear and not be preserved, thus affirming a condition of limited temporality of the work. Also within the project is TDH Folder, an initiative created to support the programming of The Drawing Hall through the involvement of a small group of supporters. The model involves a form of self-funding based on donations, which are matched by the allocation of works or multiples created by the artists invited in the individual exhibitions. On the occasion of Salon Kitty, Francesco De Grandi presents the silkscreen print Fiorellino, made on erotic calendars from the 1970s, a further reference to the iconographic material running through the project.

Completing the exhibition is the publication of Notebook No. 12 dedicated to Salon Kitty, which collects a selection of works by the artist related to the practice of drawing and a textual contribution by Gabriele Lorenzoni. A special limited edition is also planned, consisting of an excerpt from De Grandi’sAtlas of Imaginary Anatomy. The publishing project is complemented by a documentary made by The Drawing Hall together with Yanzi Srl, conceived as a tool to explore the artist’s work both within the exhibition context and in his vast research.

The Drawing Hall space in Bergamo hosts Salon Kitty by Francesco De Grandi

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