“From Pop to Eternity”: over one hundred works by Kostabi at the Vaccheria dell'Eur

Rome reaffirms its status as an international capital of contemporary art as the Vaccheria at EUR hosts the monumental survey exhibition From Pop to Eternity, dedicated to Mark Kostabi. From September 12, 2025 to March 29, 2026, more than one hundred works—paintings, sculptures, drawings, and mixed-media pieces—retrace the entire career of the American artist, a leading figure of the Pop scene and a key force in the postmodern evolution of visual art. Curated by Gianfranco Rosini for IconArs and installed in the evocative spaces of Rome’s “House of Pop Art,” the show celebrates Kostabi’s universal language—famed for his iconic faceless figures—and highlights his ability to engage with the present through a distinctive line and timely themes.

Mark Kostabi, born in Los Angeles in 1960 to Estonian parents, trained in California before moving in the 1980s to New York, epicenter of what became the revolutionary East Village art movement. There he came into contact with Andy Warhol and other major exponents of American Pop Art, launching a prolific output that spans painting, sculpture, music, and design. His style—characterized by metaphysical settings and faceless silhouettes—looks ideally to the lessons of De Chirico and Warhol yet soon takes on a personal identity: Kostabi’s works show a sharp focus on the alienation of modern humanity, on power and commodification in contemporary society, weaving together reflections on the loss of identity and on the challenge of a universal visual language.

The exhibition route at the Vaccheria at EUR begins with drawings from the early 1980s, such as Ascent to Street Level and St Peter’s Mistake, and follows the evolution of his line in a previously unseen collection of 1990s paintings, including standouts like The Studio System and The Rhythm of Inspiration, celebrated in a spectacular multimedia installation. The journey continues with sculptures and prints, accompanied by memorabilia that attest to Pop Art’s power to span eras and genres. Among recent works on view are Gaming the Course of History, A Space for Reason, Romance in Motion, and pieces created specifically for the 2025 exhibition: Market Sanctification, Between Worlds, and The Pulse of Industry.

Collaborative practice finds a point of synthesis in three works made four-hands: Facing the Truth, co-signed with his brother Paul Kostabi; Who’s Your Daddy, featuring an intervention by Enzo Cucchi; and The Rhythms of Resilience, conceived with Tony Esposito. This collective approach reflects the philosophy of “Kostabi World,” the studio launched in New York in 1988 where the artist experiments with shared production, questioning authenticity and the role of the author in contemporary society.

From Pop to Eternity follows a path begun in 2022 with a celebration of Andy Warhol and continued with exhibitions dedicated to Futurism and to virtual art. The Vaccheria at EUR thus affirms itself as a House of Pop Art, a site of cross-pollination and experimentation that puts twentieth-century visual cultures in dialogue with the new frontiers of global art. The opening, accompanied by a musical performance with Tony Esposito, Greesi Desiree Langovits, and Sasa Flauto, confirmed Kostabi’s multifaceted nature—an artist with acclaimed collaborations with musicians, iconic album covers for bands such as Guns N’ Roses and the Ramones, and design projects for Swatch and Alessi.

Kostabi’s Roman experience marks a return to the roots of a body of work that is both American and European: since 1996 the artist has lived between New York and Rome and has long considered the Italian capital an ideal city for creativity and the celebration of life. The exhibition sheds light on challenges faced within today’s cultural landscape: the commodification of art, the accessibility of visual languages, the question of authorship in the postmodern system, and the social tensions running through the digital age. “I’ve taken part in numerous exhibitions over the past 45 years, but this is undoubtedly my favorite,” Kostabi himself has said, “because it is at once the most historical and the most current.”

Beyond the artistic itinerary, the show connects with the Pop Art Fest, a festival accompanying the exhibition with talks, concerts, screenings, and lectio magistralis: among them, screenings of Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine, lectures by Gianfranco Rosini and by Kostabi himself, and the presentation of Bruno Colella’s My Italy with a cast of leading artists, actors, and musicians from the Italian scene. The event thus becomes a moment of gathering and reflection on the forms of contemporaneity and on the future of popular art.

Kostabi’s works—held by museums such as MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Corcoran in Washington, and Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna—express a creativity that transcends geographic and generational boundaries. The bond with the Italian public and collaborations with curators and musicians underscore the importance of cross-pollination and exchange in today’s art world. The free exhibition, enriched by guided tours organized by Ars in Urbe APS, offers the opportunity to explore the central themes of Pop Art and to encounter Kostabi’s poetics up close, with multisensory events and in-depth programs for a broad audience.

Through From Pop to Eternity, Rome confirms its capacity to make popular culture a laboratory of creativity, innovation, and the relationship between art and society. The event offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the evolution of visual language, on the impact of social change, and on the role of the artist in the contemporary world. Kostabi pays tribute to the city that has welcomed him, entrusting his faceless figures with the task of conveying hope, questions, and beauty in a time unafraid to confront both memory and the future.