Antonio Colombo presents Anamnesispersonal exhibition of Arduino Cantàfora. The exhibition, which inaugurates Thursday 20 February 2025, invites to discover the work of an artist who has been able to intertwine with originality the art of drawing and painting to representation
of architecture and memory.
The title of the exhibition, Anamnesisrefers to the concepts of reminiscence and memory, central in the artist’s pictorial practice. “For me, memory is also anamnesis, a remembering that he takes care,” says Cantàfora, underlining the central role of the drawing as an instrument of reflection and understanding of reality. The exhibition includes, in addition to two large historical works – The banal city (1980) e City room – Rome (1983), presented respectively to the Biennale of Architecture of Venice in 1980 and at the Biennial of Art of Venice in 1984 -, a selection of the most recent works, created between 2020 and 2025, which depict daily places such as domestic interiors, inputs of buildings, gyroscale and cities corners, transformed into representations that reveal an intense attention to the detail and the character of the spaces. Cantàfora’s painting stands out, in fact, by the ability to combine analytical precision and imagination in visual narratives pervaded by a sense of waiting.
Student and collaborator of Aldo Rossi, Cantàfora has always been characterized by the penalty and sensitivity with which he interprets architecture, objects and urban spaces. His artistic research, influenced by pictorial traditions ranging from the five-hundred Lombard to divisionism, from purism to metaphysics, is characterized by a meticulous attention to details and for suspended atmospheres, which recall the Renaissance squares and metaphysical compositions.
Arduino Cantàfora It was born in Milan in 1945. Already very young, the curiosity for organic forms, anatomy and entomology is very young, an passions remained alive also
during his architecture studies. He discovers the language of drawing very soon, which becomes his privileged tool for appropriation of the forms. The painter begins by facing the thorny technical challenge of oil painting and becoming Caravaggio’s copyist. From that moment on, the technical and artisan pleasure of painting will no longer abandon him. During the architecture studies at the Polytechnic of Milan, he perfects the pictorial representation of the architecture of the historic city. His interpretations are all played on shadows and lights, in a faithfully Caravaggesque inspiration. The skills that matures in recent years will be precious during the collaboration with the architect Aldo Rossi (1973-1978), but they will also influence his future production, dominated by the translation of architecture into painting. In 1973, Cantàfora exhibited at the Milan Triennale The similar citycurrently owned by the twentieth century museum of the Lombard capital. This large painting becomes the manifesto de The trendan architectural movement that reintegrates elements of European rationalism of the twentieth century, placing the history of the places at the center of the project. The trend He will be the subject of a retrospective at the Center Pompidou in Paris in 2012 Between the 
1985 and 1986 is in Berlin, at the invitation of the Deutscher Akademischer Austuschdienst (Dad). The city inspires him a series of paintings that will be exhibited at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin. The two large canvases, Das Andere Berlin, 1984 In 2006, they will be acquired by the National Museum of Modern Art (Mnam) to the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris. The two paintings are part of the 89 works by Cantàfora in possession of the Parisian museum. During the 90s, the painter conceives several scenography for the Milan scale and for other prestigious
Stages such as that of the Aix En Provence Festival. His scenographer’s work is worth the second place at the Ubu prize, the most important Italian theatrical recognition. Between 2022 and 2023, it is invited to two important public exhibitions: Architectures impossibles at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy e A tiempo propio At the Center Pompidou in Malaga, where two large Berlin canvases are exhibited from the collection of the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Arduino Cantàfora was a professor of architecture at the University of Venice (IUAV) from 1982 to 1986, at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture (AAM) from 1998 to 2011 and “Visiting Professor” at Yale University in 1988. In 1989 he was appointed full professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he directed the cathedral of expression visual. Since 2011 he has been an honorary professor at the APFL. He is the author of several publications on architecture and teaching, as well as an autobiographical novel and stories published by Einaudi. Since 2016 he collaborates with the Gallery of Antonio Colombo, in Milan, where he exhibited in the exhibition Case things citywith Alessandro Mendini, and in the exhibition In The Garden of Eden. A Landscape of Things With Alessandro Mendini and Friends.
Carlo Franza