Origin. The Madalena Negrone Donation

Curated by Guicciardo Sassoli de Bianchi

The Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea welcomes Origine (Origin) (2025), an oil painting on canvas by Madalena Negrone, into its permanent collection, presenting it alongside six other recent works by the artist that offer an overview of some of the central themes of her practice over the past decade.

Born in Genoa in 1982 and active between the Ligurian capital and New York, Negrone has developed an abstract painting practice in which gesture, matter, movement and rhythm intersect with an interest in scientific and metaphysical dimensions. Her work grows out of a direct, physical engagement with painting: the gesture leaves traces, concentrations, layers and vortices across the surface of the canvas that do more than construct form; they seem to register the forces that generate it. The artist’s musical training also plays a significant role in this process, reflected in the structure of her compositions through sequences, repetitions, pauses and variations, according to a conception of painting as a dynamic and rhythmic space.

In Origine, this exploration achieves a distinctive synthesis. A dense weave of turquoise and blue marks moves across the pictorial space, intertwining in knots and concentric motions. At the centre of the composition, a generative force seems to take shape through a continual alternation of emergence, expansion and dissolution. Origin thus appears as an unceasing process in which matter, energy and form enter into a constant, reciprocal relationship.

Alongside Origine, Blue 5172, a monumental canvas five metres wide, 44F Rosso e Nero (44F Red and Black), and the four works from the Egg series — Blue, Green, Red and Yellow — are presented to the public for the first time. Together they form a particularly significant group of works stemming from the Entangled series, in which the artist engages with the concept of quantum entanglement, transforming it from a scientific phenomenon into a poetic principle capable of evoking a condition of mutual interconnectedness.

This reflection on the nature of the image ultimately extends to the relationship between painting and technology. For approximately ten years, Negrone has inscribed the statement “Human Made – No Robots or AI involved” on the reverse of her works, emphasising the entirely manual nature of her practice. At a time dominated by technological developments that enable the instantaneous production of increasingly complex images, Madalena Negrone affirms the value of the time that painting requires. In this respect, too, Origine assumes an emblematic significance: far from being an automatic process, the image becomes a testament to the artist’s tangible presence and to the irreducible experience of making.

Images: © Courtesy of the artist

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Madalena Negrone was born and raised in Genoa, where she developed an interest in painting from an early age, studying under Gabriele Kutzke, a painter and sculptor of German origin. Her work draws inspiration from her native city, its Mediterranean character, its architecture and the plurality of cultures that converge there. Alongside her artistic training, she pursued studies and professional activities in international relations, musical training, and extensive experience of travel and cultural exchange. Her most recent artistic research focuses on the Entangled series, which emerged from her fascination with quantum physics. Characterised by abstract, dynamic forms, the compositions at times evoke the movement of particles through space and time, while exploring concepts of energy, movement, rhythm, space and connection. In 2022, she took part in the exhibition Forma 1 più uno at Galleria Guidi in Genoa, alongside works by several leading figures of the Forma 1 movement. In June 2023, she presented Entangled, her first solo exhibition, at the Museo d’Arte e Scienza in Milan. In 2024, she exhibited at Tourné Gallery in New York and participated in the group exhibitions Spectral Dimensions, also at Tourné Gallery, and Destiny vs. Will at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. In 2025, the exhibition Madalena Negrone meets Bruno Munari at Galleria Guidi in Genoa brought her works into dialogue with Bruno Munari’s travelling sculptures. In 2026, she presented Quantum Coherence at Tourné Gallery in Paris, in dialogue with the artist Dominique de Bellefroid on the themes of entanglement and the connections between matter, space and time.