Special Projects

PRADA RONG ZHAI

"Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto"

Prada presents “Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto” with the support of Fondazione Prada. An exhibition on view from 20 March to 15 June 2025 at Prada Rong Zhai, the historic 1918 residence in Shanghai restored by Prada.

PRADA RONG ZHAI

No. 186 North Shaan Xi Road Jing’an District, Shanghai
Tuesday - Sunday 10am-6pm

For the first time Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) and Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933), two prominent figures of the post-war Italian and international art scene, are put in dialogue with one another revealing their respective approaches to the matter and the conceptual dimension of art. As stated by curator Sook-Kyung Lee, “Fontana’s and Pistoletto’s interests in rejecting the existing paradigm of art and seeking new forms of expression persisted in their respective oeuvres. This exhibition aims to create a dialogue between the pair, emphasizing the direction they shared in their production while alluding to inevitable differences in their practices.” The curatorial vision by Sook-Kyung Lee, Director of the Whitworth, part of the University of Manchester, has been complemented by the scientific advice of Fondazione Lucio Fontana and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto.

The exhibition gathers 26 works from the late 1940s onward which underline their search for new forms of expression and the rejection of materials, methods, and subjects perceived as the paradigm of the past.The show explores furthermore their approaches to overcome painting restrictions and use materials drawn from the world beyond fine art.

Fontana's Concetto spaziale works (Spatial Concept, 1949–50 and 1961) present the essence of his investigation and bear two of the emblematic and revolutionary gestures of his research, the holes, and the slashes. In 1960, Michelangelo Pistoletto started exploring his own identity through the Autoritratti (Self-portraits) series, overcoming the conventional approach to portraits and dissolving the boundaries between the artwork and the viewer.

As Michelangelo Pistoletto recalls, “I knew Lucio Fontana, we were friends, we developed a dialogue on our work and its relationship to art history, to which we both contributed at different moments. The first time I saw his work was at the ‘Arte in vetrina’ exhibition in Turin in 1953. […] After my encounter with Fontana, I started looking for my own identity. I did so using a mirror, by means of self-portraiture. But a self-portrait cannot be created without a mirror and soon the mirror became the central element in my personal and new perspective.”

Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana (Rosario di Santa Fé, Argentina, 1899 - Comabbio, Italy, 1968), one of the most important artists of the 20th century, moved by an inexhaustible creative attitude that drove him to experiment always different ways and materials. During the Thirties he become a central figure in the Italian abstract art scene joining the group Abstraction – Création. In 1946 he conceives the Manifiesto Blanco, established theories that guided all his career. With the birth of the Spatialism, in 1949 he starts perforating the canvases and titling these artworks Spatial Concept. About ten years later he gets to the revolutionary act of the “slash”. Beyond the famous “Holes”, “Slashes”, and “Sculptures”, during the Fifties and Sixties he conceives several series of works and other “Spatial Environments” he will be working on till the end of his life. Fontana’s work continues to be exhibited globally and is featured in prestigious museum collections worldwide.

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto, born in Biella in 1933, gained international recognition with his 1962 Mirror Paintings. His Minus Objects series was considered fundamental to the birth of the Arte Povera movement. From 1967, he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades. In the 1990s, he stablished Progetto Arte and Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto to connect art in relation with diverse spheres of society for inspiring social change. He received the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion for Lifelong Achievement (2003) and an a laurea honoris causa in Political Science (2004) at University of Turin. His recent work includes the Third Paradise which would become a large collective and participatory work over the following decades and the Universario exhibition space, inaugurated at Cittadellarte. In 2007 he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts. In 2021 Universario, an exhibition space in which the artist presents his most recent research, is opened at Cittadellarte. In February 2025 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Over the course of his long career, he has received countless international prizes and awards and participated thirteen times in the Venice Biennale. His works are in the permanent collections of major contemporary art museums.

Image credits

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, 1961, Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan / Michelangelo Pistoletto, Figura umana, 1962, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale. All’alba Venezia era tutta d’argento, 1961. Private Collection © Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan by SIAE 2025 Ph. Roberto Marossi

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Metrocubo d'infinito (Oggetti in meno 1965-1966), 1966. Michelangelo Pistoletto – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua. Ph. Paolo Pellion

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale. Teatrino, 1965. Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan © Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan by SIAE 2025

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Il simbolo del Terzo Paradiso, 2003. Michelangelo Pistoletto – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Quadro da pranzo (Oggetti in meno 1965-1966), 1965. Michelangelo Pistoletto – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua. Ph. Pierluigi di Pietro

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Il presente – Uomo di schiena, 1961

Michelangelo Pistoletto – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua. Ph. J.E.S.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mappamondo (Oggetti in meno 1965-1966), 1966 - 1968

Michelangelo Pistoletto – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; Galleria Continua. Ph. J.E.S.

Portraits
Lucio Fontana, Courtesy Fondazione Lucio Fontana
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Photo Pierluigi Di Pietro. Courtesy by Archivio Michelangelo Pistoletto

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"Mirroring: Lucio Fontana and Michelangelo Pistoletto"

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