"Italian Expressionists" in Vercelli: a dialogue of identities among history and memory

At Spazio ARCA, the former Church of San Marco in Vercelli, a profoundly identity-rooted journey is inaugurated "Espressionisti italiani" (Italian Expressionists) : a visual narrative through the works of the great masters of Italian Expressionism, including Lucio Fontana, Emilio Vedova, Renato Birolli, Renato Guttuso, Fausto Pirandello, and Aligi Sassu. The exhibition, born from the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection and curated by Daniele Fenaroli, represents the first stage of a multi-year project that aims to engage in dialogue, from time to time, with new protagonists of contemporary art. In this edition, it is Norberto Spina, born in 1995, who gives voice to the anxieties of the present through site-specific works, unpublished pieces, and significant international loans, including one from the Royal Academy in London.

The exhibition, open from September 11, 2025, to January 11, 2026, unfolds along the thread of memory and the tensions that Expressionism—Italian in its most personal declination—was able to bring into national art between 1920 and 1945. The artists on display are representatives of freedom, bearers of an anti-rhetorical gaze expressed as resistance against the celebratory logic imposed by fascism. Their visions privilege unbalanced bodies, unsettling still lifes, dreamlike cities, and marginal lives immersed in a daily reality dense with silence and disarming in its simplicity. Works such as Fontana’s Standing Nude (1939), Vedova’s Venetian Coffeehouse (1942), and Guttuso’s Portrait of Mimise (1938) appear not only as pages of Italian art history but as living languages that still question our own era.

The exhibition positions itself as a space of alternation and confrontation between past and present. Within this context lies the work of Norberto Spina, an artist devoted to reinterpreting themes of personal and collective memory through refined use of archival photographs, Italian traditional iconographies, and superimposed images that become visual fragments of remembrance. Spina investigates the relationships between individuals and memory, making contemporary painting converse with the legacy of the 1930s, evoking lost archives, fractured memories, and fragmented identities. His art distances itself from rhetoric and embraces empathy, distortion, and self-inquiry—the core elements of the Expressionist poetics.

An essential aspect of the exhibition is historical contextualization. Between 1920 and 1945, fascism and the world war reshaped the horizon of life and creation in Italy. In this climate, the artists of the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection produced a silent counter-narrative made of “deviant” gestures, muted colors, and alienated figures. This is an art that chose marginality and existential protest as a space of resistance. The Expressionists rejected monumentality and instead brought forth human fragility, social tensions, and the pain of an era devastated by ideologies. Their images break with the dominant celebratory vision: bodies and objects appear suspended, distorted, restless—capable of conveying subtle anxieties and collective sorrows.

The choice to juxtapose the historical works of the collection with those of Spina is not merely a documentary operation. The curatorial path develops thematic clusters in which color becomes a form of resistance, portraiture becomes a search for identity, and the present emerges as an uncertain threshold between past and future. The visitor is called not to contemplate a pacified history but to enter into the process of representation and memory. The exhibition invites us to question what we see, to move beyond distance from historical events, and to experience the tensions that Expressionism still—and above all—transmits to contemporary times.

The dialogue between images of the past and gazes of the present is one of the exhibition’s most innovative challenges. The adventure of Italian Expressionism is narrated not as a melancholic relic but as a “living language,” still capable of speaking to us about freedom, responsibility, and vision. Works by Birolli, Guttuso, Fontana, Pirandello, and Sassu disrupt the order imposed by power and instead embrace vulnerability, psychological inquiry, and empathy as principles of a new art. Expressive research translates into an alternative narrative made of deep ferment that interrogates both history and our present.

The exhibition thus assumes the form of a critical map: within the former Church of San Marco, emotional landscapes, lost visual archives, and possibilities of transformation intertwine. Each work challenges the traditional idea of representation and invites the viewer to become an active participant in the process of memory. The audience is urged to question its own vision of past and present, within a path that demands responsibility and sensitivity. Through thematic clusters and references across different eras, the complex identity of Italian Expressionism emerges, capable of becoming a vehicle for still unresolved questions.

This process of confrontation is further enriched by its international dimension: the loan from the Royal Academy in London underscores the intention to open dialogue between Italy and the global scene of contemporary art. The exhibition presents itself as a snapshot of the dialectical tension that animates art history and makes it a living space—a place of resistances, experiments, and questions.

At the foundation of the initiative lies the DNA of the Iannaccone Collection: masterpieces created between 1920 and 1945 intertwine with contemporary visions and sensibilities, giving rise to a narrative that is both fascinating and profound. The fact that the exhibition is conceived as being “within history” and not merely as historical reenactment allows us to intensely experience the critical space that art creates within society. Rereading Italian Expressionism today means accepting its shadows and tensions as integral parts of the social and cultural transformations of our present.

The path suggested by curator Fenaroli is rich and articulated: from the investigation of color to the articulation of memory, from lost identities to the possibilities of a future that becomes a creative present, every work becomes both window and mirror of existential and historical questioning. The visual testimonies of Fontana, Vedova, Birolli, Guttuso, Pirandello, Sassu, and others embody the restless spirit of a season that knew how to oppose dominant culture and re-elaborate the imagery of a country in crisis.

To view Expressionist works today in the framework of the Vercelli exhibition does not only mean recovering the artistic memory of an era but also questioning the current possibilities of resistance, creativity, and awareness. The intersection between historical works and the contemporary research of Norberto Spina reveals the active force of a season that continues to speak to our time and invites us to confront the past as a living language—capable of sustaining reinterpretations, challenges, and new poetic horizons.