CENTRO PECCI exhibitions

Margherita Manzelli

Le signorine

Curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol

14 December 2024 – 11 May 2025

Opening: 13 December 2024, h 6pm

Centro Pecci is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Margherita Manzelli, opening on 13 December 2024. Margherita Manzelli. Le signorine, an exhibition project in which Intesa Sanpaolo is partner, features a selection of paintings from the 1990s to the present, displayed alongside a series of drawings and a group of works created specifically for the exhibition, one of which is inspired by the cathedral of the city of Prato.

The title, Le Signorine, reflects the artist's way of referring to the female figures that have long populated her works. Independent, proud, timeless, and androgynous, Manzelli’s “signorine” take centre stage and determine their own modes and forms of representation, challenging deep-rooted conventions and claiming their independence from family ties.

Since the beginning, the artist's practice has been centred on the exploration of three elements: painting, performance, and writing. Manzelli's desire to connect these seemingly disparate areas of interest has allowed her to develop a body of work unique in Italy. After studying in Ravenna, she moved to Milan in the early 1990s, during a decade that regarded the return of painting with some scepticism after the excesses of the 1980s.

In her subjects, the female body — along with the exploration of her own visionary obsessions — becomes a pretext for delving into painterly experimentation and for indiscriminately pushing the

boundaries of traditional artistic genres. Ultimately, it allows for a playful engagement with the ambiguity of the artist’s condition, suspended between the need to expose and circulate her work and the desire to withdraw to protect herself on a human and personal level.

The signorine are figures who have always and consistently populated the artist’s imagination and work. With determination, Manzelli has explored their psychological tensions, revealing both their fragility and resilience. Hyper-alert and pale, nude or semi-nude, they seem ready either for dissection or to defy convention; restrained by the thin barrier of their own skin and with gazes that spill over and pierce those who look at them, these women overturn the assumptions of representations of the female body in art history, typically conceived for the male gaze.

In the paintings, the young women are placed within an abstract spatiality, composed of broad fields with geometric patterns and floral motifs, evoking the designs of imaginary or real fabrics — even those of the artist’s own garments — or in spaces defined by coloured vertical bands. Central to Manzelli’s work is the relationship between the subject and the background, held in a constant tension where the figures seem to both emerge from and merge with the context. In this perceptual exercise, with background colours shaping the facial features of the signorine, Manzelli captivates the viewer.

For more than thirty years, the head has been the starting point of the artist’s exploration, from which her vision takes shape and her obsessions are given a voice. In the drawings presented in the exhibition, the head emerges from a white field, as often seen in Manzelli’s works on paper. Through her works, Manzelli seems to evoke an awareness of the fragility and resilience of the human condition, a sentiment experienced globally during the recent pandemic. The head is less a site of neurosis, and more a complex formal element capable of synthesising and conveying facial features with stories and emotions. A boundless source for the expressive possibilities of art.

Margherita Manzelli. Le Signorine is part of the 2024 exhibition programme, Toscana al Centro. Textiles, emblematic of Prato’s industry, have always played a central role in the spatial and existential structure of the artist’s paintings; perhaps as exudations of the subjects’ interiority that expand outward or, conversely, an existential fate that threatens to envelop. The exhibition is on view at Centro Pecci alongside two separate solo shows dedicated to Peter Hujar and Louis Fratino.

About Margherita Manzelli

Margherita Manzelli (Ravenna, 1968. Lives and works in Milan) moved to Milan after studying at the Academy in Ravenna in the 1980s. Her practice has revolved around painting, drawing, writing, and performance for more than 30 years. Her female figures are iconic of a pictorial language that has remained constant throughout her career in the desire to delve into her own obsessions, testified also by her poems, texts, and performances.

She has participated in several group exhibitions in institutions such as: ICA, London; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; La Biennale di Venezia; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Castello di Rivoli - Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin; XXV São Paulo Biennial; and Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at MAXXI – Museo national museum of 21st century arts, Rome; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Art Institute of Chicago; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; and Galleria Civica, Trento. 

Thanks to ValeriaNapoleoneXXArtists (VNXXA) for the support in realizing this project.   

ValeriaNapoleoneXXArtists (VNXXA)  is a dynamic initiative dedicated to empowering female  artists with strong ties to the collection. This ongoing commitment is focused on pivotal projects essential to the artists' practices, offering robust support for creating artworks, publications, exhibitions, and other significant ventures. VNXXA actively challenges the systemic gender disparities that often  restrict female artists' opportunities and agency.  Dedicated to ensuring that female artists' voices are  heard and celebrated, it promotes the visibility and influence of women in the art world and emphasises the necessity of diversity and inclusion.

In copertina: Margherita Manzelli, Senza fine, 2023. Olio su tela,  200 × 300 cm (78 ¾_ × 118 ⅛_). Photo © Roberto Marossi. Courtesy of the Artist & greengrassi, London