from May 17 to September 28, 2025
Villa Giulia – Pallanza
“Universo Nespolo”, a retrospective exhibition produced and organized by the City of Verbania and curated by Sandro Parmiggiani.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–13:00 and 16:30–19:30
(Thursdays and Saturdays open until 22:00)
Closed on Mondays
Info: Tourism Office – tel. +39 0323 503249 / 542250 – turismo@comune.verbania.it
Media partner: Sky Arte
Catalogue: Moebius Edizioni
Around one hundred works by Ugo Nespolo retrace nearly sixty years of artistic production in a retrospective that celebrates the eclectic, ironic, and constantly innovative spirit of his work.
Painting, photography, cinema, artist’s books, ceramics, and polychrome wood are among the many fields explored by the artist, always remaining faithful to his unmistakable stylistic signature.
His collaborations with companies and unconventional realities beyond the traditional art world reflect his belief in “bringing art into life,” driven by the conviction that a contemporary artist must transcend established boundaries and clichés.
The exhibition marks the start of a series of internationally oriented events at Villa Giulia, dedicated to promoting art and culture, and enhancing the value of Verbania and its surrounding landscape.
From May 17 to September 28, 2025, Villa Giulia in Verbania hosts the retrospective Universo Nespolo, produced and organized by the City of Verbania and curated by Sandro Parmiggiani. The exhibition presents around one hundred works spanning over sixty years of Ugo Nespolo’s career (b. 1941), characterized by a profound eclecticism that led the artist to express himself in a wide variety of forms, always true to a distinctive language—playful, transgressive, and instantly recognizable. His work often breaks down visual elements and reassembles them in unexpected ways.
The exhibition begins in the mid-1960s, with influences from Pop Art and Arte Povera, photography and artist’s books, ceramics and polychrome woods, following the idea of the “uniform-diverse”—a concept coined by Nespolo to describe his transitions across media while maintaining a coherent artistic identity.
The early part of the exhibition features his debut works, which revisit historical avant-gardes like Futurism and Dada, before diving into the contemporaneity of Pop Art and Arte Povera. Toward the end of the 1960s, Nespolo distanced himself from the latter with an ironic critique, producing a series of works under the theme Fogginia, using luxurious materials such as ebony, silver, and alabaster in a tongue-in-cheek contrast to the ideals of Arte Povera.
Embracing Nespolo’s boundless experimental drive, the exhibition includes rooms dedicated to numbers and logic, themes that later led to works inspired by the golden ratio, large-scale pounced drawings, and pieces in polychrome ceramics, inlaid wood, and Murano glass, many of them crafted by the historic Barovier & Toso workshop.
A dedicated space presents photographs taken during Nespolo’s long stays in New York, especially his images of southern Manhattan—a vibrant hub of global contemporary galleries in the 1970s and 1980s. Also on display are models and sketches of stage sets and costumes designed by the artist for opera productions in New York, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere.
The exhibition concludes with rare artist’s books, a room devoted to recent works from the Dark Side series—large-format pieces with fragmented narratives—and the striking inflatable sculpture Ubu, installed on Villa Giulia’s terrace as a bold symbol of optimism and of the artist’s affirmative, questioning engagement with today’s world.
Three additional works by Nespolo will be exhibited at the Museo del Paesaggio (Via Ruga 44 – Verbania), a cultural institution deeply rooted in the Lake Maggiore region and its valleys.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Moebius Edizioni.
Media partner: Sky Arte.
BIOGRAPHY
Ugo Nespolo was born in Mosso (Biella), graduated from the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin, and earned a degree in Modern Literature. In the late 1960s, he was represented by the Schwarz Gallery in Milan, which also featured Duchamp, Picabia, Schwitters, and Arman. His first solo show in Milan, presented by Pierre Restany and titled Macchine e Oggetti Condizionali, reflected the spirit and innovations of the group Germano Celant would call Arte Povera.
In the 1960s, Nespolo moved to New York, where he embraced the city’s cosmopolitan energy and was captivated by the emerging Pop Art movement. In the 1970s, he was active in Conceptual and Arte Povera circles. A pivotal moment came in 1967, when he became a pioneer of Italian Experimental Cinema after meeting Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Andy Warhol, and Yōko Ono—key figures of the New American Cinema. Alongside Mario Schifano, Nespolo made numerous avant-garde films between 1967 and 1968, featuring friends and fellow artists like Enrico Baj, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Lucio Fontana. In Paris, Man Ray gave him a script for a film that became Revolving Doors. His films have been shown at major institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, and the Venice Biennale.
Together with Baj, he founded the Istituto Patafisico Ticinese, and is still recognized as one of the foremost authorities in this field. In the late 1960s, with Ben Vautier, he launched a series of Fluxus Concerts, including Les Mots et les Choses, the first Fluxus event in Italy.
Despite his American influences, Nespolo never abandoned the lessons of the European avant-gardes, particularly Fortunato Depero, whose playful vision of art deeply influenced him. The idea of art as life (also the title of a 1998 book by Nespolo) lies at the heart of his creative output, and draws directly from the Futurist manifesto Reconstruction of the Universe (1915).
This philosophy informs his interest in design, applied arts, and creative experimentation across advertising, illustration, fashion, stage and costume design. His materials are as varied as his media: wood, metal, glass, ceramic, fabric, and alabaster.
Convinced that an artist must also be a thinker, Nespolo has written extensively on aesthetics and the art system. In January 2019, the University of Turin awarded him an honorary degree in Philosophy.
His art remains deeply connected to everyday life and rich in conceptual meaning: “You cannot make art without thinking about art.” Objects, for him, become expressive languages—detached from their utilitarian function and transformed into artworks. He revisits and reinterprets the past through citation and evocation, giving new life to historical references and turning them into prompts for reflection.
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