Enigmatic creatures, sea clippings and alluring surfaces: these are just a few glimpses from the major retrospective of the Italian artist Pino Pascali (1935-1968), currently on view at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Curated by Mark Godfrey, the art exhibition is an occasion to rediscover the legacy of the master, showcasing 49 works that are in dialogue with nine other prominent artists of his time. According to the curator, Pascali was an “exhibitionist”, in the sense that his studio practice and exhibition-making were deeply connected. In fact, he aimed at “creating captivating but temporary environments made up of the artist’s own works, environments that were more than the sum of their parts." Pascali’s work engendered an innovative and original point of view and these creations still amaze us within the frame of the exhibition design conceived by 2X4.

Born in Bari, in the southern Italian region of Puglia, in 1935, Pascali moved to Rome in 1955 to study scene painting and set design at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. Under the guidance of the painter and poet Toti Scialoja, he developed a profound interest in theatricality that influenced his notion of the relationship between an artwork and its viewer. His first job as an assistant set designer at RAI (Italian Radio Television) later brought him closer to the advertising industry and the dynamics of post-war consumerism. After participating in several group exhibitions, his first solo show at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome in 1965 marked the beginning of a new phase, characterised by intense experimentation, tragically and abruptly interrupted by a fatal motorbike accident in 1968.

Art critic and curator Lea Vergine synthesises Pascali’s aesthetics, noting that “in the hands of Pino Pascali, the things of everyday life are escaping the obvious to take on the characteristics of the extraordinary and the titanic." The exhibition in Milan begins by recreating five pivotal solo exhibitions, a journey that proceeds almost as if we were walking through the pages of the adventure books the artist loved to read as a child. At the same time, the bodily and architectural details of the works exhibited at Galleria La Tartaruga are still reminiscent of Pascali’s professional experience in advertising, as we can see in Ruderi su prato (Ruins on meadow) or Primo piano labbra (Lips close-up), both from 1964.

The Armi (Weapons, 1965-1966) are the protagonists of his subsequent exhibition at Sperone Gallery in Turin, in 1966: these are a series of large-format sculptures for which the metal was originally collected from mechanic workshops. As recalled by the art historian and critic Marco Tonelli in his recent essay Pino Pascali. La scultura e il suo doppio (Pino Pascali. Sculpture and its double, 2023), the technique of bricolage reflects the frequent reuse of weapons for civil purposes in post-war Italy, turning these sculptures from magnified toys into warnings that are still tragically relevant.

Two exhibitions at L'Attico Gallery in Rome in 1966 and 1968 represent a turning point. A significant example is the Animals series from 1966, composed of a collection of modern fossils that reinvents the tradition of natural history museums with a playful approach. In this regard, in 1967, Pascali stated to art critic and feminist theorist Carla Lonzi that play is “not like it's only children's play, it's all play, isn't it?” A ludic approach also characterises the 1968 installation Cinque bachi da setola e un bozzolo (Five bristleworms and a cocoon, displayed in the last section of the retrospective, consisting of plastic scrubbers, where the opposition between natural and artificial is even more evident: just as silkworms are destined to become butterflies, so the fibre itself is destined to transform from organic to synthetic, taking on vibrant shades of colour in the process. Once again, what might otherwise be confined to an everyday, if not domestic, dimension, is here elevated to a new form.

Similar elements can be traced in Pascali’s monographic exhibition at the Venice Art Biennale in 1968. Despite their woolly appearance, the works from that show are of artificial origin, as we can observe in Pelo (Hair), composed of a mushroom-shaped acrylic fibre work that is a totemic and hybrid entity, a conjunction of the plant and animal worlds. The dualism between nature and artifice is also the key to interpreting the second section of the current retrospective, which carefully investigates the rich variety and the conservation issues of the materials Pascali used, such as canvas, fake fur, hay, foam rubbers, Eternit fibre cement and more.

The third section of the retrospective is dedicated to the dialogue between Pascali and nine other artists with whom he exhibited at three significant group shows: Fuoco Immagine Acqua Terra at L’Attico (1967), the Cisquième Biennale de Paris (1967) and the renowned first exhibition of the Arte Povera movement, curated by Germano Celant at Galleria de Foscherari in Bologna (1968). Within the same section, we can find landmark works by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Piero Gilardi, Jannis Kounellis and Michelangelo Pistoletto. The recurring theme that Celant emphasised was "the primordial elements" and assumes more properly monumental dimensions in the fourth and last section. Here, some of the most iconic of Pascali’s works hint at a connection with nature and its archetypes, going beyond the geographical boundaries of his homeland, as we can admire in 32 metri quadri di mare circa (Almost 32 square meters of sea (1967). Through the lens of photographers Ugo Mulas, Claudio Abate and Andrea Taverna, such works were once captured in interactions with Pascali himself and now come back to life within the exhibition design.

In conclusion, it might be stated that the vitality and eclecticism of Pascali’s work have transcended both space and time, proving to be far more lasting than a momentary glimmer.