CAPOGROSSI. A Retrospective Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero Peggy Guggenheim Collection
 

The distinctive glyph of Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900-1972), like Lucio Fontana's gesture of cutting the canvas, or the materiality of Alberto Burri's works, has left an indelible mark on the history of Italian art in the 20th century. With CAPOGROSSI. A Retrospective, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection pays tribute to a major figure in the first generation of post war artists, represented in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation since 1958 with his painting Surface 210 (1957).
This exhaustive retrospective explores Capogrossi's unique contribution to 20th century art, tracing the evolution of a signature abstract style of grandiose orchestration of mark and color, and its numerous variations over the subsequent decades. With his endlessly inventive deployment of his fork-like symbol, Capogrossi became synonymous with the Italian boom of the 50s and 60s, a period of optimism and rapid economic expansion.

With the collaboration of the Fondazione Archivio Capogrossi, Rome, and with the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture, this long overdue retrospective brings together over seventy of the artist's paintings and drawings, covering the span of his career. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is grateful to lenders public and private who have contributed works to the exhibition, notably the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, which made available an important core of major works, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (MART) of Rovereto and Trento, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.