Maurizio Pellegrin - I ritratti perduti | Until September 5, 2026
- May 28
- 3 min read
Marignana Arte is pleased to present I Ritratti Perduti 1990–2025 (The Lost Portraits 1990–2025), a solo exhibition by Maurizio Pellegrin, opening to the public on Friday, May 22, 2026, at the gallery's main venue. The exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration with Maurizio Pellegrin, which began in 2015 and has developed over time through various exhibition projects.
Within Pellegrin's body of work—spanning over forty years of research—the portrait emerges as a constant yet unstable presence: at times evident, at others fragmentary, and often embedded within more complex structures. It never presents itself as an autonomous or definitive image, but rather as a trace surfacing through paintings, photographs, objects, and surfaces, shaping an articulate reflection on the human being.
In these works, the face cannot be fully grasped: it appears and recedes, is altered or withheld, to the point of bordering on anonymity. If tradition viewed the portrait as a tool for representing identity, here the process is reversed: identity is not asserted, but rather brought into crisis and dispersed. Created for the most part before the widespread rise of contemporary visual culture centered around the "selfie," these works preserve an intimate and silent quality, far removed from the need to appear.
Pellegrin's practice is grounded in a process of collecting and recomposing heterogeneous images, objects, and materials, removed from their original function and reorganized according to new relationships. In this space, past and present overlap, and the portrait shapes itself as a place of transit, where individual and collective memory intertwine without ever becoming fixed.
I Ritratti Perduti 1990–2025 thus stands as a reflection on the very possibility of representing the human being today: not through the definition of the face, but through its progressive subtraction; not in the certainty of the image, but in its fragility.
The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Galleria Michela Rizzo, will be accompanied by a text by Jonathan Molinari.
BIOGRAPHY
Maurizio Pellegrin was born in Venice in 1956 and lives in New York. He graduated with a degree in Art History from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, while simultaneously dedicating himself to the study of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice. He studied Sociology at the New School University and Eastern Philosophy at New York University in New York, beginning his academic career in the 1990s. He served as director of the Venice Program Master of Art at New York University, where he also taught for nearly two decades. During those years, he joined the Teachers College at Columbia University, where, in addition to teaching, he was offered the position of senior gallery curator. He also taught in the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Subsequently, in 2011, he was appointed director of the school at the National Academy Museum and School in New York, later becoming its dean, and also serving as its creative director in 2014-2015. In 2017, he founded the New York School of the Arts, where he currently serves as executive director. Pellegrin's work has been the subject of over 160 solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions in international galleries and museums, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art; Fort Wayne Museum of Art; Akron Art Museum; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; and Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Ca’ Pesaro, Venice. His works are included in major private and public collections worldwide, and there is an extensive literature on his work, as he is both the author and subject of more than 40 monographs. His work has also been published in more than 500 articles and essays.
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Saturday, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Other days by appointment only
Vaporetto (Waterbus) stops:
Salute – Line 1
Spirito Santo – Lines 5.1 / 5.2 / 6