ITALIAN ART OPENS AT THE WAREHOUSE
November 12, 2025 – April 4, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MIAMI -- Since its inception, the Margulies Collection has had a longstanding commitment to the art of Europe, particularly the movements and materials of Italy. This season we present an exhibition of Italian Art that spans over 50 years. This time period in Italy encompasses major shifts and art movements including Arte Povera and Transavanguardia. Ultimately, however, the diversity of the artworks in the exhibition underscores the idea of contemporary scholars, that any perceived unity within Italian art today comes from the embrace of identity, contradictions, impermanence, and fluidity. From the plaster filled burlap sacks of Jannis Kounellis to the technical mastery of the polychrome majolica ceramics by Bertozzi and Cassoni, the works show a wide range of approaches to artmaking that cannot be categorized by any particular movement.

The exhibition Italian Art 1970 – 2024 opens with a larger-than-life horse by Mimmo Paladino, an artist that Martin Margulies has collected in-depth, acquiring 9 pieces over a two-year period in 2023-24 and mounting a long-term solo exhibition for the artist adjacent to Italian Art. The horse has been a consistent trope in Paladino’s work, drawing from Etruscan culture and the importance of the animal in the novel Don Quixote (1605-15). During the 1980s, Paladino was associated with the Transavangardia movement coined by Achille Bonito Oliva because of the artists’ return to painting the figure after the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which prioritized abstraction. Adorning the exhibition is the diagonally placed Fibonacci sequence in neon by Mario Merz. The work alludes to the idea that infinity itself can be considered a medium for a work of art.

A unique feature of the exhibition is that we bring together Arte Povera works alongside contemporary Italian artworks. Beginning just after the 1960s, the term Arte Povera was coined by the late renowned Italian curator Germano Celant to describe a group of artists who subverted traditional ways of making art by using ephemeral and “poor” materials. For many artists associated with this movement, their work marked a shift in representation. They presented objects instead of representing them through traditional forms of making like painting or sculpture. One of these artists is Michelangelo Pistoletto. The show features a new acquisition from Pistolettos’s 2024 Color and Light series that combines jute, mirror, and paint in a glided frame. Color and Light may be considered a refined version of his famed installation and performance at the 2009 Venice Biennale titled Twenty-Two Less One, when the artist shattered mirrors with a large hammer in front of visitors. We are pleased to present Color and Light (2024) and Two Less One (2009) to provide a historical framework of the artists’ contemporary work. Similarly, a 1971 frosted refrigerator motor piece from Pier Paolo Calzolari contextualizes his new paintings from 2021 utilizing salt, shells, wood and flame.

Martin Margulies began collecting Italian art in 1988 with a work by Jannis Kounellis from Ileana Sonnabend. The artist is one whom Margulies also collects in-depth as the collection now holds six works by Kounellis including Senza Titolo from 1999, which was included in his 2019 retrospective at the Fondazione Prada curated by Germano Celant. The exhibition pays tribute to the history of the dealers, collectors, gallerists and curators who supported these Italian artists at the critical early stages of their careers. Some of these figures include the instrumental dealer and collector Christian Stein whose seminal gallery is in Turin and Milan, the dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, and the late Italian curator Germano Celant, who is today considered one of the most influential curators of our times. 

Italian Art 1970 - 2024 is a continuation of our dedication to presenting historically important artworks to our community and representing the avant-garde movements of Europe in context with contemporary art. In 2021 we presented Arte Povera: Postwar Italian Art from the Margulies Collection which was acclaimed as “extraordinary” by Max Hollein, art historian and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 2022, our subsequent exhibition The Italians was reviewed in The New Criterion by artist and writer Franklin Einspruch. We are pleased to present Italian Art 1970 – 2024 as a 50-year sampling of the art of Italy, pairing important works from the Arte Povera movement with contemporary Italian artists.

Works by Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Maurzio Pellegrin, Mimmo Paladino, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Bertozzi & Casoni, Giuolio Paolini, Gilberto Zorio, and Luciano Fabro are included.