The first room opens onto the origins of the Sonnabend collection, emphasising the moment of transition from Abstract Expressionism to the new interest in the representation of reality that emerged in the late 1950s. Works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and James Rosenquist represent the American side of this research, testifying to the birth of a language that renewed painting through the use of everyday images and objects. Moving in the same direction are the works of Jim Dine and John Chamberlain, who translate painterly gesture into material and three-dimensional terms. Dialogue with Europe is represented by the works of Mario Schifano and Michelangelo Pistoletto, protagonists of a new Italian realist sensibility, and by Arman and Christo, linked to the Nouveau Réalisme group. Together, these presences outline the gallery’s international programme, which from the outset promoted a comparison between the new American and European artistic trends.
The second room is dedicated to Pop Art, a movement that Ileana Sonnabend intuited and promoted in Europe with extraordinary precocity. Works by James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Roy Lichtenstein mark the overcoming of painterly gesture in favour of images with flat, brilliant colours, derived from advertising and mass media. In dialogue with them, the sculptures of Claes Oldenburg and George Segal translate everyday reality into three-dimensional forms, balancing irony and immediacy. The room testifies to how Sonnabend’s vision grasped Pop Art not as a critique of consumer society, but as the capacity to transform its imagery into a new universal artistic language.
The third room explores Minimalism of the 1960s which, parallel to Pop Art, established itself as a reaction to the emotional intensity of Abstract Expressionism, favouring essential forms, specific materials, and structural clarity. Donald Judd and Robert Morris abandoned painting to confront space and material directly, while Larry Bell and John McCracken delved into light, transparency, and colour as structural elements of sculpture. The route also includes conceptual practices, with the wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, the rigorous installations of Mel Bochner and Barry Le Va, and the Text Paintings of John Baldessari, works that challenge the property and permanence of the artistic object. The path concludes with Peter Halley, who in the 1980s reinterpreted minimalist geometry in an urban and social key. Thus, the room tells the transition from a search for formal reduction to an inquiry into the very meaning of the work.
The fourth room presents the research of the 1960s that developed and surpassed Minimalism, focusing on the relationship with space and the dialectic between form and material. Robert Morris explores the concept of Anti-Form with his Felt Pieces, felt works where gravity and process determine form and dimension. Bruce Nauman transforms sound into plastic material and uses the body in early films to dialogue with space, involving the spectator directly. Richard Serra experiments with unconventional materials like vulcanised rubber and lead, creating sculptures that take spontaneous forms in relation to weight and space. Keith Sonnier integrates light and transparency into neon installations, transforming luminous energy into a sensory and psychological experience. The room shows how these artists share the tension to overcome the closed forms of Minimalism, favouring process, material, and interaction with the spectator.
The fifth room celebrates Italian Arte Povera, introduced by Ileana Sonnabend at the end of the 1960s thanks to her privileged connection with Italy and direct knowledge of the Turin and Piedmontese artists, particularly through Michelangelo Pistoletto and the vibrant Turin art scene. The selection in this room includes Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio, Mario Merz, Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, and Giulio Paolini, protagonists of a movement that explores poor materials, physical and chemical processes, the balance between elements, and poetic interaction with space. The works exhibited in the room highlight the variety of individual paths and, at the same time, the common attention to reduction to the essential and a direct relationship with materials, with references to Anti-Form research and earlier experiences such as those of Mario Schifano.
The sixth room explores the artistic research of the 1970s across performance, photography, and conceptualism. John Baldessari reworks found photographs in a narrative and symbolic key, while Gilbert & George transform their own body into a “living sculpture” through the use of the photographic medium. Vito Acconci brings corporeality to the centre of the work, merging physical action and psychological implications. Christian Boltanski works on personal and collective memory with photographic installations that speak to universal identity. Piero Manzoni conceives the body as a means of sharing, ideally linking the physicality of Acconci’s actions with Boltanski’s attention to collective identity. Bernd and Hilla Becher, with their black and white studies of industrial architecture, combine rigour and minimalism, showing how photography can become a conceptual language. Thus, the room highlights Ileana Sonnabend’s interest in radical and interdisciplinary research where body, memory, light, and image redefine contemporary artistic language.
The seventh room highlights the exploration of experimental languages of the 1970s across performative, photographic, and video practices. William Wegman transforms his dog into the subject of ironic shots. Boyd Webb constructs tableaux vivants that blend the everyday and the absurd. Andrea Robbins and Max Becher document cultural and geographical shifts. Luigi Ontani, as well as Anne and Patrick Poirier, reflect on the past through disguises and historical reconstructions, while Hiroshi Sugimoto captures time in suspended and timeless images. Richard Artschwager, the only non-photographer in the section, transforms everyday objects into alienating spaces.
The eighth room recounts the artistic research of the 1980s, characterised by the ambiguity of perception and the surpassing of the human. Terry Winters and Carroll Dunham transform painting into organic processes, with signs and shapes that evoke biomorphic organisms. Peter Fischli and David Weiss play with the everyday, across photography, video, and sculptures, transforming banal objects into enigmatic presences. Robert Feintuch blends irony and psychological tension through figuration, while Rona Pondick explores bodies in metamorphosis, combining realistic casts with hybrid forms. The room highlights the capacity of these artists to disorient the viewer by playing with the boundary between reality and imagination.
The ninth room explores the dialogue between photography and painting, showing how the photographic medium can confront the history of painting without nullifying it. Candida Höfer, trained in the Düsseldorf School, renders silent and rigorous public interiors, investigating the “psychology of social architecture” through the absence of people. Elger Esser and Lawrence Beck reinvent the landscape as a space of memory and contemplation, evoking historical views with compositional precision and delicate light, while Clifford Ross, who started with painting and sculpture, experiments with digital techniques and unusual supports to capture the grandeur of nature. Matthias Schaller pays homage to painting through large-format photographs dedicated to the palettes of masters, including Paul Cézanne, revealing an intrinsic dialogue between the two languages. These artists, present in the gallery from the 1990s until its closure in 2014, confirm how photography and painting can coexist, generating new possibilities of language and vision.
The tenth room explores German Neo-Expressionism with Anselm Kiefer, Jörg Immendorff, and A.R. Penck. Kiefer’s works layer history, myth, and ideology, addressing the trauma of German collective memory. Penck presents totemic and symbolic figures that immediately captivated the American public. Immendorff transforms everyday subjects into dreamy and politically charged allegories. The room shows how these artists share an approach where painting and history meet, transforming symbols and memory into tools for reflection and cultural resistance, opening new perspectives for the dialogue between art, politics, and collective memory.
The eleventh and final room presents Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, and Ashley Bickerton, protagonists of the American Neo-Geo movement of the 1980s. Koons transforms everyday objects and popular icons into monumental sculptures, celebrating kitsch with surprising creative autonomy. Steinbach arranges common objects on shelves, restoring a formal balance that dialogues with the conceptual typology of the Bechers and the Pop tradition, where the everyday becomes poetic material. Bickerton, on the other hand, merges geometric rigour and Pop-inspired colours in works that evoke Minimalism only to subvert its codes, transforming surfaces and structures into reflections on identity and perception. Together, the artists reinterpret the legacy of Pop and Conceptual Art in a new and lucidly contemporary language, capable of transforming mass culture into an icon of the art of the time.
On the occasion of the opening, the museum will also host a temporary focus dedicated to Andy Warhol’s famous filmed portraits titled Screen Tests. This is a series of short, black and white cinematic portraits in which the artist films both ordinary and famous people among his studio visitors, transforming them into “living portraits”. Twenty-one movies, each lasting about 4 minutes and created between 1963 and 1966, will be presented, selected by the Sonnabend Collection Foundation in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The exhibition design is curated by unostudio.
Main sponsor: BPER Banca
Photo by Giuseppe Gradella
