Easy Irony: Irony in Italian art between the 20th and 21st century

Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni.

Irony is a common thread that runs through decades of Italian artistic production and reveals itself as a recurring aesthetic and critical strategy. From the 1950s to the present day, with Surrealism and Metaphysics as key precedents, the exhibition traces the Italian history of art. 

As a semantic procedure, irony is a mechanism that consists in a subject’s ability to refer to a meaning without explicitly stating it, or even to deny it by asserting its exact opposite. Over the centuries, it has proved to be an extraordinary philosophical device, capable of undermining or unmasking certainties, and experimenting with new possibilities of representation. 

Irony is by no means a simple tool: in fact, the title Easy Irony, ironic in itself, reminds us of the apparent simplicity of the phenomenon, while at the same time revealing its intrinsic complexity. This contradiction invites us to question the nature of language and the commonplaces that accompany it. 

Artists of different generations have recognized the destabilizing and imaginative power of the ironic procedure, especially in the Italian scene, where its proliferation seems particularly justified. The weight of its artistic tradition, a reactionary society strongly influenced by the Church and the Fascist past, the success of the Commedia all’italiana and the more recent “cinepanettoni” films, the rise of Berlusconism and with it an aggressive consumer society: these are just some of the «institutions» to be undermined and challenged. 

With its imaginative, paradoxical impulse, irony becomes an alternative, an anti-tragic attitude, a transformative energy that overturns perspectives, just as laughter does when it unexpectedly erupts.  

Organized in the exhibition around major themes that illustrate its different variants and transhistorical presence, irony emerges as a formal procedure based on paradox, a linguistic game that recalls childhood and its freedom to rewrite the rules, a feminist weapon to criticize patriarchy and society, a tool for political mobilization and a form of institutional critique. There is also a dark humor in the exhibition, which runs through several sections, an energy that seems to be the opposite of cheerfulness, which, in a cynical and desecrating way, urges us to face the contradictions of existence.

Finally, Filippo Bisagni’s exhibition design reads the architecture of MAMbo in an ironic key, evoking the «ghost of Rossi», a structure lost during the renovation of the building directed by the architect Aldo Rossi, and applies to each section a two-color scheme that spatially amplifies its thematic premises.

Easy Irony. Irony in Italian art between the 20th and 21st century is organized on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, the first venue of the MAMbo—Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

The exhibition is supported by TRUST per l’Arte Contemporanea and the main sponsor is Gruppo Hera. The project takes part of the institutional program of ART CITY Bologna 2025, realized on the occasion of Arte Fiera. 

Artists: Carla Accardi, Vincenzo Agnetti, Enrico Baj, Nanni Balestrini, Riccardo Baruzzi, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Luther Blissett, Alighiero Boetti, Monica Bonvicini, Benni Bosetto, Marcella Campagnano, Maurizio Cattelan, Guendalina Cerruti, Giuseppe Chiari, Daniela Comani, Roberto Cuoghi, Giorgio De Chirico, Giuseppe De Mattia, Gino De Dominicis, Antonio Donghi, Donne/Immagine/Creatività, Lia Drei, Pablo Echaurren, Roberto Fassone, Lara Favaretto, Giosetta Fioroni, Chiara Fumai, Alberto Garutti, Aldo Giannotti, Piero Gilardi, Piero Golia, Gruppo XX, Ketty La Rocca, Sergio Lombardo, Arrigo Lora Totino, Lina Mangiacapre, Piero Manzoni, Lucia Marcucci, Eva Marisaldi, Eva e Franco Mattes, Fabio Mauri, Maurizio Mercuri, Marisa Merz, Aldo Mondino, Liliana Moro, Bruno Munari, Giulia Niccolai, Valerio Nicolai, Giancarlo Norese, Luigi Ontani, Rosa Panaro, Clemen Parrocchetti, Pino Pascali, Diego Perrone, Cesare Pietroiusti, Marinella Pirelli, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paola Pivi, Lisa Ponti, Emilio Prini, Carol Rama, Silvia Rosi, Cinzia Ruggeri, Salvo, Alberto Savinio, Greta Schödl, Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio, Enrico Scuro, Davide Sgambaro, Adriano Spatola, Aldo Spoldi, Alessandra Spranzi, Valentina Tanni, Federico Tosi, Franco Vaccari, Francesco Vezzoli, Patrizia Vicinelli, Italo Zuffi.