What can painting still convey in an era dominated by the contemporary? This is one of the questions that run through the work of Carlo Maria Mariani (Rome, 1931–New York, 2021), an artist who made art history, memory, and culture the foundation of his personal and unconventional artistic exploration. Five years after his passing, Palazzo Citterio in Milan traces his entire career with *The Eternity of Painting*, the first major posthumous retrospective dedicated to him, scheduled from October 9, 2026, to January 10, 2027.
Curated by Eike Schmidt and Clayton Calvert, the exhibition brings together 70 works, including paintings and large-scale cartoons, ranging from his early works of the 1940s to pieces created in 2019. It traces a journey spanning decades of artistic exploration and diverse styles—from conceptual neoclassicism to hyperrealism, from abstract art to metaphysical painting—while never losing sight of a rigorous reflection on the very meaning of painting.
Carlo Maria Mariani’s body of work, in fact, stems from a constant engagement with tradition and thought. The study of theoretical, literary, and philosophical texts constitutes a fundamental component of his artistic inquiry and translates into a style of painting in which memory, beauty, and perception engage in dialogue through a language that is at once rigorous and conceptually innovative.
The exhibition at Palazzo Citterio also offers the opportunity to reconstruct the complexity of the artist’s career through works drawn from prestigious Italian and international collections. The comparison of works held in different institutions and collections thus provides a comprehensive view of his body of work, highlighting the connections, continuities, and transformations that have characterized his artistic exploration.
“The Eternity of Painting” thus offers an opportunity to reexamine Carlo Maria Mariani’s body of work in its entirety, highlighting the coherence of a painterly practice rooted in the dialogue between past and present, memory and contemporaneity.
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| The Eternity of Painting: Milan Hosts the First Major Posthumous Retrospective Dedicated to Carlo Maria Mariani |
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