From October 25, 2023 to February 11, 2024, Triennale Milano will be hosting the exhibition
Italian Painting Today, curated by Damiano Gullì, Curator for Contemporary Art and Public
Program at Triennale, and with the exhibition design by Studio Italo Rota.
The exhibition – named after the volume published by Multhipla/Giancarlo Politi in 1975 – is
devoted to contemporary Italian painting and brings together the works of 120 of the most
interesting Italian artists from the 1960s to the 2000s.

In the year of the centenary celebrations for Triennale Milano, Italian Painting Today is ideally
linked to the history of the institution insofar as it draws inspiration from the mural painting
exhibitions organized in the Palazzo dell’Arte since 1933, as well as from Luciano Baldessari’s
project for the 9th International Exhibition in 1951. The aim is to highlight how painting has
been an object of analysis and display for Triennale since its founding – based on a lively
dialogue between different disciplines.
Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, has stated: “After the renewed Museum of
Italian Design and the Home Sweet Home exhibition, we are presenting a third exhibition
project conceived for the Triennale’s centenary: a major exhibition on the state of
contemporary Italian painting, starting from the recovery of the institution’s history and
providing an opportunity to interpret the contemporary art scene through the expressive
language of painting.”


Damiano Gullì, curator of the exhibition, affirms: “Italian Painting Today is the result of years
of research, study visits, and encounters – both personal and professional – with artists
throughout Italy. The scene that has emerged is a remarkably lively one. By connecting with
its own history, Triennale has taken up the challenge of presenting painting today in all its
complexity, offering an opportunity to analyze the scene, promoting and enhancing it both
within our country and around the world.”


The exhibition features individual exemplars created between 2020 and 2023 – one work per
artist – that provide cross-generational perspectives and original interpretations of
contemporaneity. The result is an intergenerational mapping, a prismatic reconstruction of
the multiple facets of the practice of painting today. The time frame considered has seen
exceptional historical, social and economic transformations and upheavals – from a pandemic
to wars, not to mention the dreaded undermining, and disappearance, of authorship through
the evolving applications of artificial intelligence. Direct and indirect reflections of such events
are detectable in many of the works on display.