Ceroli Totale

7 October 2025 – 11 January 2026

The Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, in collaboration with Banca Ifis, presents CEROLI TOTALE, a monographic exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli (Castel Frentano, 1938). Curated by Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Director of the GNAMC, and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, the exhibition traces seventy years of the sculptor’s artistic research through a selection of twenty works, including sculptures and installations, drawn from the collections of the GNAMC, Banca Ifis and the artist himself.

As part of the Artista alla GNAMC initiative, Ceroli will be the Protagonist of 2025. The “artists in residence” programme, conceived according to the formula “one year, one artist, one gallery”, will involve the master in a series of meetings with the public, scholars and students from the academies and faculties of Valle Giulia, allowing younger audiences in particular to explore the artist’s work directly. For the Artista alla GNAMC initiative, Ceroli has created two site-specific works entitled La grande quercia and Le ceneri.

“It is a privilege to retrace with Mario Ceroli the most significant stages of an artistic career that, masterpiece after masterpiece, spans the history of Italian art, from the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo to Arte Povera and up to the present day. Ceroli has masterfully staged an exhibition rich in evocative elements, reinterpreting every work, both historic and recent, with self-irony in a constant search for himself,” declares Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and co-curator of the exhibition.

“Ceroli Totale is a selection of the masterpieces acquired by Banca Ifis, documenting his artistic career from the 1950s to the present day. It is an objective we began last year precisely at the GNAMC, which is now strengthened by this exhibition and which will culminate in the opening of the Museo Ceroli to the public in 2026. Our Bank’s intention is to move forward towards the opening of the museum, in order to preserve the collection—in the fascinating setting of the artist’s house, garden and hangar-studio—and to make research and experimentation possible through workshops and studios intended for young people,” declares Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio, President of Banca Ifis.

“I conceived this exhibition as straightforward and simple, with a contemporary character: serious, made with the mind but also with the heart, culturally sound. The works that follow one another from room to room make me feel the drive and enthusiasm I had as a young man, when, at seventeen, I created the nailed tree trunk now on display under the title Composizione*, owned by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. When I finished installing the exhibition, I felt as though I were standing in a great square—that of Piazza del Popolo, of Caffè Rosati—when Rome was at the avant-garde, with the galleries of the time, La Tartaruga, La Salita, L’Attico, and the new generation of the Roman school.”*
Mario Ceroli

“The CEROLI TOTALE exhibition was conceived by the artist as a work of art in itself, ‘total’, a new act in a long and coherent continuity and freedom of imagination in the staging of works that has unfolded over seventy years and continues to the present day. The exhibition aims to highlight how Ceroli’s ongoing research has always succeeded in renewing itself within space, taking risks despite the successes and recognition achieved each time, and pioneering new sensibilities, trends and broad directions in contemporary creativity,” declares Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, co-curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition presents, across 10 galleries of the museum, a selection of the artist’s masterpieces, including La Cina (1966), Primavera (1968), Balcone (1966), Progetto per la pace (1969) and La battaglia (1978), alongside works that have never previously been exhibited, including Sesto senso (1999), Le chiacchiere (1989), Tela di Penelope (1992) and Arpa birmana (1992). The exhibition is conceived as a staging of Ceroli’s theatrical world, in which each work is cast by the artist as a character summoned to “perform” an unprecedented role, in a permanent search for contemporaneity. Many of the complex sculptural compositions occupy the space assigned to them in such a way that viewers can immerse themselves in them and become part of the experience, as though transported to an artificial elsewhere.