Torino Artscape is Artissima’s column highlighting current exhibitions in the city’s leading contemporary art institutions: a regular feature offering a glimpse into the most compelling exhibition programs, curatorial visions, and artistic expressions that animate Turin’s contemporary art scene. Torino Artscape invites you to explore Turin as an essential destination for art lovers, offering inspiration and cultural enrichment throughout the year.

The first episode is dedicated to the Pinacoteca Agnelli.

Alice Neel. I Am the Century

Up to 6.04.2026

A slender child stands in the dim light of a domestic interior, posing proudly for a portrait, arms akimbo, composed. Her blue eyes suggest a distant love for a mother she barely knew, from whom she was soon separated. This is the first portrait that opens the exhibition Alice Neel. I Am the Century, the first Italian retrospective of one of the most significant painters of the 20th century, curated by Sarah Cosulich and Pietro Rigolo, on view at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin until Monday, April 6, 2026.

The delicacy of the portrait of her daughter—at once fragile and strikingly intense —immediately reveals the strength of the American painter. Alice Neel (Marion Square, PA, 1900 – New York, 1984) was deeply attuned to the humanity of her subjects and to their emotional states. She created psychological portraits in which the human comedy and individual lives unfold alongside the historical forces of her century. Spanning seven decades, the exhibition is organized chronologically into six chapters.

Inspired by Gogol’s Dead Souls, Neel described herself as a “collector of souls.” She was deeply involved in the lives of those she painted. In her portraits, partners and acquaintances are often shown seated by a window in her studio in Spanish Harlem, New York. The American artist was fully engaged with the social life of the neighborhood: she painted political figures and intellectuals, the Latin American community, marginalized individuals, as well as friends and family. Women are central among her subjects, often intentionally shown as pregnant. Free from the objectifying male gaze, they reshape art-historical conventions. Each portrait follows its own rules, expressing a humanity beyond classification.
► DISCOVER MORE

Piotr Uklański. Faux Amis

Unil 6.04.2026

Hip-hop music and colored lights welcome visitors into the Scrigno at the Pinacoteca Agnelli. The usual silence is replaced by a fully functioning dance floor. Visitors are invited to dance alongside two plaster dancers by Antonio Canova. The gesture is deliberately anti-hierarchical and creates a short circuit between high and low culture.

Dance Floor (1996) opens Piotr Uklański’s exhibition Faux Amis, on view until April 6, 2026. It marks the fourth chapter of the Beyond the Collection program. The title — “false friends” — reveals the artist’s approach. In a deliberately provocative game, he sets his works in contrast with those of Bernardo Bellotto, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Antonio Canova, and Édouard Manet.

Fascinated by the idea of provoking ambivalence, even conflicting responses, Uklański brings together a constellation of juxtapositions that may at first seem almost superficial, yet reveal a more complex network of historical and cultural references. One of the most explicit examples is the pairing of a painting of his wife’s body—curator and critic Alison M. Gingeras—with Renoir’s La baigneuse blonde (1882). Here, the traditional image of the female figure is unsettled. Idealized, passive nudity gives way to a self-aware, contemporary presence. The body becomes a symbol of assertion.

Beside Pinacoteca, the project involves two more institutions in Turin: the Museo di Anatomia Umana Luigi Rolando, where the works engage with the anatomical collection, and the Museo della Frutta Francesco Garnier Valletti, where the artist’s still lifes enter into dialogue with botanical models.
► DISCOVER MORE

Pista 500

Once a FIAT testing track atop the Lingotto, Pista 500 is now a panoramic art walk, enhanced by a rooftop garden and site-specific installations. The current display features thirteen large-scale works, including sculptures and light installations, engaging with the industrial architecture and the surrounding urban landscape, transforming the space into an open, collective environment.

Among these is Monica Bonvicini’s iconic neon installation Come Run With Me (2024), stretching approximately 30 meters along the southern curve. The luminous text evokes escape, speed, and freedom, weaving together language, architecture, and visual culture. More recently, Paul Pfeiffer presented Vitruvian Figure (Juventus), the winning project of the 2024 Premio Pista 500 at Artissima. The work is an immersive sound installation accompanied by a large-scale image displayed on two billboards along the track. Coherent with his interdisciplinary practice, the piece continues Pfeiffer’s exploration of collective phenomena and spectacularization of events, exploring moments designed for mass audiences and their amplification through media.
► DISCOVER MORE