Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico has been conceived as the first act of of a larger trilogy, part of a path of study and research aimed at deepening and broadly investigating the figure of Mapplethorpe, which includes two other exhibition events in 2026. Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del desiderio will be the second chapter in this wide-ranging examination of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre, and will be staged at Palazzo Reale in Milan, displaying a retrospective of his work, with a selection of his most iconic, powerful and daring images, focusing on the more intense and provocative aspects of his artistic output. Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme della bellezza will be held at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis in Rome and will focus on his studies of beauty understood as classical harmony, with detailed comparisons between images and a selection of significant pictures taken in Italy that have not been previously shown.

«The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation is excited to collaborate with Marsilio Arte, Denis Curti, and his colleagues on these Mapplethorpe exhibitions, which will be beautifully presented at prestigious venues. Denis Curti’s thoughtful curation will provide a unique experience for viewers by transforming the basic approach in each venue, highlighting different facets of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre. While there will be some overlap, each installation will employ a different approach to the artist’s works. Venice has not hosted a comprehensive solo Mapplethorpe exhibition since 1992 when Germano Celant’s iconic international retrospective was shown at Palazzo Fortuny. We eagerly await Mapplethorpe’s return to Venice after 33 years, as well as those versions planned for Rome and Milan», declares Michael Ward Stout, president of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

With over 200 images, some of them on view in Italy for the first time, the retrospective Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico at Le Stanze della Fotografia pays tribute to the great American artist. It continues the groundwork laid down by curator Germano Celant in his exhibition Tra antico e moderno. Un’antologia (Turin, 2005), by reinserting his work in the context of the art and culture of the United States in the mid-20th century.

It is precisely the classical dimension of Mapplethorpe’s photography, strongly underlined in Venice through meticulous comparisons with images of ancient statuary, that renders timeless the bodies he portrays, captured in all their plasticity and beauty: ancient and contemporary representations of an irrepressible and knowing desire, moulded by the geometry of light and transfigured into eternal, almost divine icons, though still very human. Thus, the exhibition puts the focus back onto Mapplethorpe’s quest for a perfect sinuosity, a sensual and sacred rotundity that can be seen in the photographs of the flawless male and female bodies on display in Venice, as well as in the magnificent images of flowers, revealed in their naked, truly poetic compositions that are at once ambiguous and delicate.