MEMO FORNASARI – SPACE IN EXPANSION
Curated by Carlo Micheli
Palazzo Bentivoglio – Sala Falegnami – Piazza Bentivoglio 36 – Gualtieri (RE), Italy
12 September – 4 October 2026
Opening: Saturday, 12 September, 6:00 pm
Opening hours: Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 am–12:30 pm and 3:00 pm–6:00 pm
For special openings: +39 338 833 6418
Info: www.memofornasari.it – memofornasari@gmail.com
With the patronage of the Municipality of Gualtieri and I Borghi più belli d’Italia (The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy)
From 12 September to 4 October 2026, the Sala Falegnami at Palazzo Bentivoglio in Gualtieri will host “Space in Expansion”, an exhibition dedicated to Memo Fornasari (Mantua, 1910 – Verona, 1982), a multifaceted and radical figure of twentieth-century Italian art: a total artist capable of moving across languages, techniques and disciplines with a freedom that today appears strikingly contemporary.
Curated by Carlo Micheli, the exhibition is conceived as a necessary tribute to an artist who was able to reinvent the relationship between art, technology and industry, anticipating many of the concerns of postmodern research. Painter, set designer, director, designer and inventor, Fornasari embodied a vision of art as a field of absolute experimentation, in which every gesture is an opening and every form a question.
Entering the Futurist milieu at a very young age—he was invited by Marinetti to the first Rome Triennale—Fornasari moved through the twentieth century, absorbing its artistic currents without ever adhering to them passively. His Galassie (Galaxies), engraved and layered surfaces in which light becomes matter, represent one of the earliest Spatialist experiments in Italy. They enter into an ideal dialogue with the explorations of Fontana, Dova and Crippa, placing Fornasari among the pioneers of a cosmic vision of art.
At the height of his artistic research are the Radiografie cromatiche (Chromatic X-rays), analytical immersions into colour conceived as a living organism. Entanglements of signs, graduated transparencies and tonal vibrations take shape not as mere stylistic exercises, but as attempts to harness light and convey its complexity through a language that approaches the scientific dimension.
After visiting one of his exhibitions, Virgilio Guidi wrote: “You have incorporated so many important events of the century into your work, mastering them with great skill.” This definition reaffirms Fornasari’s ability to traverse the twentieth century with restless clarity, continually reinventing his own visual vocabulary. Fornasari dissolved the boundaries between art and technology, aesthetics and function, intuition and method.
The exhibition in Gualtieri presents a selection of works from public and private collections, retracing the fundamental strands of his artistic production through a journey that reveals the complexity of an artist who has yet to be fully discovered, and who today deserves a critical reassessment capable of placing his work definitively within its historical context.