Pietro Lista: In controluce

The show curated by Renata Caragliano traces fifty years of work by the artist, born in Umbria (Castiglione del Lago, 1941) and based in Campania since 1954.

“In controluce” highlights, through “signs of light”, the work of an artist who is theatrical, changeable, and driven by a voracious curiosity. The title offers a double reading: it invites viewers to look “against the light” at the artist’s work, while also emphasising Lista’s ongoing “encounter with light” – a light that emerges from darkness yet always carries a memory of it, abstract, artificial, and without shadows.

The exhibition, the result of two years of research in close collaboration with the artist and his archive, unfolds across five thematic sections. These explore key aspects of Lista’s practice and his ability to forge new and unexpected connections between his works, shaping a highly personal creative universe. The display spans more than fifty years of his career, bringing together both historical pieces, from the late 1960s onwards, and many recent and often unpublished works. It showcases a wide range of themes and a constant experimentation with techniques and materials, from painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking to performance.

Each of the five sections, arranged across seven rooms on the museum’s second floor, considers aspects of Lista’s production that recur and coexist at different moments. The exhibition opens with works and performative actions centred on “light”, a source that continually switches his creative energy on and off, accompanying him like a guiding spirit. The journey continues through other recurring themes in his research: “Clouds”, “Mars Black”, “Acephalous Bodies”, and “The Artist’s ‘Recovered’ Head”. The show also offers an “In controluce” view of Lista’s public art, presented through archival photographs and a video.