Mario Giacomelli, Papaveri Rossi

PERUGIA | NATIONAL GALLERY OF UMBRIA
FROM 15 OCTOBER 2025 TO 6 APRIL 2026

The exhibition features 5 works on display for the very first time taken during the 1960s on the plateau of Colfiorito and Castelluccio di Norcia.

The project CAMERA OSCURA pays tribute to Mario Giacomelli, one of the leading figures of twentieth century photography, to mark the centenary of his birth.

From 15 October to 6 April 2026, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria a Perugia pays tribute to Mario Giacomelli (1925-2000), one of the leading figures in photography during the second half of the twentieth century, with the exhibition Mario Giacomelli. Papaveri rossi, curated by Alessandro Sarteanesi in the CAMERA OSCURA, devoted to photography and incorporated into the itinerary of the museum in Perugia.

The exhibition features a series of the artist’s works on display for the very first time, depicting the Umbrian landscape, all marked by the almost “pictorial” use of colour, an unusual aspect for Giacomelli, who is renowned mainly for photographs that play on striking contrasts of blacks and whites, solids and voids.

The exhibition also provides the opportunity to explore the artistic and human relationship that linked  Mario Giacomelli to the painter and sculptor Alberto Burri, represented here by several photographs that clearly show Burri’s influence, Their friendship should be viewed from the perspective of their shared interest in exploring the landscape, albeit in different ways, as part of the Arte Informale movement in Italy in the period immediately following the Second World War.

The main part of the exhibition consists of five photographs on display for the very first time, taken during the 1960s on the plateau of Colfiorito and Castelluccio di Norcia. The exhibition also features about a dozen abstract works, which are contemporary with the previously mentioned ones. They are also colourful landscapes which show how Giacomelli considered himself a visual artist, using photography as an artistic medium.

To quote the curator Alessandro Sarteanesi, it is through a path that straddles the centuries, documented by the works in the museum’s collection, that Giacomelli’s work finds terrain for radical contemporary reflection, in contrast to the obsessively repetitive banality of the display of flowers immortalised by social networks. The plateau of Colfiorito, which used to be inhabited and cultivated, while its fame is growing, is gradually becoming depopulated, and the life force of the landscape, consumed as an image/display case and not as an experience, is gradually being eroded.

The exhibition features two photographs of the most iconic subjects of Giacomelli, that of the famous “Pretini” which depict a roundabout (in a coloured version too), displayed in Perugia for the very first time.

Magonza catalogue, with texts by the curator, Costantino D’Orazio and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.

The exhibition has been put on with the support of the L’orologio società cooperativa – Business Unit Sistema Museo.

MARIO GIACOMELLI

Mario Giacomelli was born in Senigallia in Le Marche in 1925. His father died when he was nine years old and he was brought up by his mother.

At the age of thirteen he began working in the printing works Tipografia Giunchedi. In 1950 he opened Tipografia Marchigiana.

In 1953 he began to take photographs — landscapes and portraits— and met Giuseppe Cavalli, a photographer and intellectual.

With the support of Cavalli, he took part in the first competitions in photography and established a reputation for originality. In 1955 Paolo Monti defined him as “the up-and-coming figure in photography”: his “magic realism” went beyond the vision of neo-realism, enriching it with an intimate gaze that managed to capture reality in all its crude, vivid materiality. Series of works such as Vita d’ospizio (Life in the hospice) (1954), Mattatoio (Slaughterhouse) (1961), and Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (Death will come and it will have your eyes) (1966) are immediately striking in terms of the bluntness with which they deal with the theme of death.

In 1963, at Senigallia, he met Nemo Sarteanesi, who put him in touch with the artist Alberto Burri, leading to a longstanding friendship. At Città di Castello Sarteanesi organised Giacomelli’s first exhibition in 1968 and, in 1983, a second exhibition together with Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, of which he was the director.  In 1964 he was the only Italian artist selected for The Photographer’s Eye, curated by John Szarkowski at MoMA in New York, which purchased his series Scanno. It marked Giacomelli’s affirmation as an international photographer.

He began working on the series Caroline Branson da Spoon River (1967–1973), inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. During the 1980s and 1990s he produced various cycles of works inspired by poetry.

In 1978 he took part in the Venice Biennale in the section directed by Luigi Carluccio. He presented an installation A contatto della natura negli spazi puri (in contact with nature in the pure spaces) consisting of seventeen landscapes followed on the floor by two aerial photographs and a panel full of earth.

Starting from 1996 he began his final visionary work: Questo ricordo lo vorrei raccontare (I would like to recount this memory) with which he completed his path as a photographer, a fitting testament to his artistic career. Mario Giacomelli died on 25 November 2000.

CAMERA OSCURA

The project Camera Oscura.La Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria per la fotografia, curated by Marina Bon Valsassina and Costanza Neve, aims to explore the essence of photography, a medium which, since its earliest origins, has captured instants and recounted stories, becoming a record of our reality and human emotions. The very concept of the camera oscura, which dates back to several centuries before the invention of photography, represents the idea of a place in which light penetrates exclusively through a minute hole, creating images projected onto a surface. This process of revelation lies at the heart of photography, a dialogue between light and shadow which gives rise to unique, personal visions.

The project offers a new key to understanding reality, shedding light, even in the darkness, on the art of photography, in the sense of being both a technique and an artistic medium. It demonstrates, through photographs, the common thread that links the art of the past to the present. A neon sign marks the entrance to this ‘secret’ space, enveloped in soft lighting and atmospheric shadows. Here you will not find tempera, oil, paintbrushes or glue, but instead the exhibition offers visitors the chance to explore concepts of time, exposure, depth and focusing.

Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria (Corso Pietro Vannucci, 19)

15 October – 06 April 2026

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 08.30 a.m. – 7.30 p.m. (last admittance at 6.30 p.m.)

Tickets: full price €12.00; reduced price €2.00.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF UMBRIA

Perugia, Corso Pietro Vannucci, 19

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