"2025 East and West" in Rome: Italy and China meet to create new visual paths.
Jayde BrowneShare
At the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, "2025 East and West: International Dialogue Exhibition – From Shanghai to Rome" will be held until September 14, 2025. This exhibition brings together more than seventy works by over forty international artists, building bridges between East and West. This project stems from the desire to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo's death and the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and China, elevating artistic dialogue to concrete and visible action at a time when globalization is pushing toward new aesthetic and cultural frontiers.
The exhibition is curated by two expert and complementary figures: Gabriele Simongini, an Italian critic, and Zhang Xiaoling, a Chinese curator. The project is promoted by the Ministry of Culture, the Shanghai Artists Association, and realized by Zhong Art International, with the involvement of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and the patronage of leading Italian academies. Inside the rooms at Viale delle Belle Arti 131, visitors are invited to cross geographical and linguistic boundaries to immerse themselves in a visual narrative that juxtaposes contemporary Chinese avant-garde movements with masterpieces of the 20th-century Italian school.
The thematic sections "Reflections of Space-Time," "Expansion of Thought," and "Generation of the Imaginary" draw attention. These sections bring the GNAMC's historic collection into dialogue with Chinese artists from Shanghai and a selection of contemporary Italian and international artists. The exhibition showcases works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Amedeo Modigliani, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Schifano, alongside Maurizio Cattelan and Rudolf Stingel, emerging artists such as Daniela De Lorenzo, Alessandro Piangiamore, Emanuele Becheri, and Davide Rivalta, as well as globally recognized masters of Chinese art.
The core of the exhibition is the desire to transcend traditional geographical and cultural boundaries, establishing a profound and interwoven dialogue on contemporaneity. The selected works demonstrate how the construction of artistic identity today is traversed by multiple influences, in an equal exchange where the global condition becomes fertile ground for rewriting languages and reinterpreting the social significance of art itself. The curatorial intent is to preserve the cultural roots of each artist, enhance the subjectivity of languages, and stimulate the creative tension between diversity and universality.
The section dedicated to Italian Futurism, with the visual energy of Balla and Boccioni, engages with the metaphysical sensibility of de Chirico and Morandi, while Burri's informal explorations find a counterpart in the material and intellectual works of Chinese painters. The exhibition unfolds as a polyphonic journey where thought expands from one side of the world to the other, offering an immersive and layered interpretation of modernity, memory, space, and time. The direct comparison between Italian geometric rigor and Chinese fluid gestures stimulates a process of mutual enrichment, in which tradition and innovation merge in the search for new perspectives.
“2025 East and West” is also an opportunity to renew the debate on the function of contemporary art: from diplomatic vehicle to cultural interpreter, each work on display becomes an active testimony in the construction of a global consciousness. The encounter between different realities occurs not only on a formal level, but also on an emotional and spiritual one, with the public challenged to redefine their position with respect to artistic enjoyment. Italian artists associated with the 20th-century avant-garde movements once again prove themselves a source of inspiration and models for Asian artists addressing the challenges of modernity.
The international scope of the exhibition, celebrating the memory of Marco Polo, highlights the "road of art" as a route of discovery and cross-fertilization. The event was organized thanks to an institutional framework involving the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Shanghai Artists Association, and the patronage of the Chinese Embassy. The program of collateral activities includes meetings, debates, and conferences that allow artists to share practices, reflections, and develop networks of relationships between museums, academies, and research centers.
Visitors can thus appreciate Chinese art, currently at the center of an international renaissance that intertwines ancient tradition and innovative languages. Throughout the rooms of the GNAMC, the works open up to a variety of interpretations, evoking landscapes, identities, and reflections on the future in a dialogue that centers the spiritual and social dimensions of artistic practice. The exhibition thus becomes a laboratory for coexistence, where globalization does not equate to standardization, but rather generates virtuous tensions, differences to be preserved and enhanced.
The curatorship emphasizes the importance of an intercultural vision capable of transcending mere exhibition to create a relational, lived, and shared experience. In this novel museum environment, "2025 East and West" reaffirms the GNAMC's vocation as a hub between disciplines, languages, and generations, in the belief that art remains the most effective tool for expressing values of dialogue, respect, and innovation.
This exhibition aims to be a mirror of the present and a horizon for the future, a space where Italy and China meet to create new visual alphabets and to bear witness to the spirit of our time. The interaction between artists, the public, and institutions creates a web of contingencies and possibilities that transforms the encounter between East and West into a resource for thinking and experiencing contemporaneity.
The exhibition is curated by two expert and complementary figures: Gabriele Simongini, an Italian critic, and Zhang Xiaoling, a Chinese curator. The project is promoted by the Ministry of Culture, the Shanghai Artists Association, and realized by Zhong Art International, with the involvement of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and the patronage of leading Italian academies. Inside the rooms at Viale delle Belle Arti 131, visitors are invited to cross geographical and linguistic boundaries to immerse themselves in a visual narrative that juxtaposes contemporary Chinese avant-garde movements with masterpieces of the 20th-century Italian school.
The thematic sections "Reflections of Space-Time," "Expansion of Thought," and "Generation of the Imaginary" draw attention. These sections bring the GNAMC's historic collection into dialogue with Chinese artists from Shanghai and a selection of contemporary Italian and international artists. The exhibition showcases works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Amedeo Modigliani, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Schifano, alongside Maurizio Cattelan and Rudolf Stingel, emerging artists such as Daniela De Lorenzo, Alessandro Piangiamore, Emanuele Becheri, and Davide Rivalta, as well as globally recognized masters of Chinese art.
The core of the exhibition is the desire to transcend traditional geographical and cultural boundaries, establishing a profound and interwoven dialogue on contemporaneity. The selected works demonstrate how the construction of artistic identity today is traversed by multiple influences, in an equal exchange where the global condition becomes fertile ground for rewriting languages and reinterpreting the social significance of art itself. The curatorial intent is to preserve the cultural roots of each artist, enhance the subjectivity of languages, and stimulate the creative tension between diversity and universality.
The section dedicated to Italian Futurism, with the visual energy of Balla and Boccioni, engages with the metaphysical sensibility of de Chirico and Morandi, while Burri's informal explorations find a counterpart in the material and intellectual works of Chinese painters. The exhibition unfolds as a polyphonic journey where thought expands from one side of the world to the other, offering an immersive and layered interpretation of modernity, memory, space, and time. The direct comparison between Italian geometric rigor and Chinese fluid gestures stimulates a process of mutual enrichment, in which tradition and innovation merge in the search for new perspectives.
“2025 East and West” is also an opportunity to renew the debate on the function of contemporary art: from diplomatic vehicle to cultural interpreter, each work on display becomes an active testimony in the construction of a global consciousness. The encounter between different realities occurs not only on a formal level, but also on an emotional and spiritual one, with the public challenged to redefine their position with respect to artistic enjoyment. Italian artists associated with the 20th-century avant-garde movements once again prove themselves a source of inspiration and models for Asian artists addressing the challenges of modernity.
The international scope of the exhibition, celebrating the memory of Marco Polo, highlights the "road of art" as a route of discovery and cross-fertilization. The event was organized thanks to an institutional framework involving the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Shanghai Artists Association, and the patronage of the Chinese Embassy. The program of collateral activities includes meetings, debates, and conferences that allow artists to share practices, reflections, and develop networks of relationships between museums, academies, and research centers.
Visitors can thus appreciate Chinese art, currently at the center of an international renaissance that intertwines ancient tradition and innovative languages. Throughout the rooms of the GNAMC, the works open up to a variety of interpretations, evoking landscapes, identities, and reflections on the future in a dialogue that centers the spiritual and social dimensions of artistic practice. The exhibition thus becomes a laboratory for coexistence, where globalization does not equate to standardization, but rather generates virtuous tensions, differences to be preserved and enhanced.
The curatorship emphasizes the importance of an intercultural vision capable of transcending mere exhibition to create a relational, lived, and shared experience. In this novel museum environment, "2025 East and West" reaffirms the GNAMC's vocation as a hub between disciplines, languages, and generations, in the belief that art remains the most effective tool for expressing values of dialogue, respect, and innovation.
This exhibition aims to be a mirror of the present and a horizon for the future, a space where Italy and China meet to create new visual alphabets and to bear witness to the spirit of our time. The interaction between artists, the public, and institutions creates a web of contingencies and possibilities that transforms the encounter between East and West into a resource for thinking and experiencing contemporaneity.