Miart Milan: Group Show | Booth C08

Richard Saltoun Gallery presents a focused booth presentation at Miart, bringing into dialogue two major Italian artists of different generations: Ida Barbarigo (1920–2018) and Sandro Chia (b. 1946). 

 

Ida Barbarigo developed a highly personal painterly language oscillating between abstraction and figuration. After an early figurative phase, her work in the 1950s and 1960s embraced an abstract expressionist approach, capturing fleeting atmospheres and perceptions of urban life. From the late 1970s onwards, she returned to figuration with a gestural and materially dense style, where figures emerge as ghostly presences within layered surfaces. Her later works, often inspired by mythology, push the human form toward emotional and formal dissolution. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Museo Eremitani, Padua (2025); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2023); Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2016); IVAM, Valencia (2004); and in multiple editions of the Venice Biennale.

 

Sandro Chia is a leading figure of the Transavanguardia, theorized by Achille Bonito Oliva. His practice combines expressive figuration, symbolism, and gestural mark-making, which he defines as “mythical Conceptual Art.” Since the late 1970s, his work has explored the relationship between individual experience and broader social and political narratives through a dynamic, expressionist language. He gained international prominence in the 1980s, with key participations in Documenta 7 and the Venice Biennale, alongside solo exhibitions at major institutions including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. His work has been widely exhibited across Europe and the United States, including numerous retrospectives.

 

Spanning post-war experimentation and the resurgence of expressive figuration in the late twentieth century, the presentation traces two distinct yet resonant approaches to painting, both deeply engaged with the emotional and symbolic potential of the human figure.

 

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Miart Milan

Allianz MiCo South Wing

Gate 1 – Parco CityLife
Gate 2 – Viale Eginardo

 

OPENING DAY (by invitation)

Thursday 16 April

Preview | 6pm – 9pm
 

PUBLIC DAYS

Friday 17 April | 11.30am – 8pm
Saturday 18 April | 11.30am – 8pm
Sunday 19 Sunday | 11am – 7pm

 

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