Mattia Moreni. From His Training Years to the Final Tremor Before the Great Mutation. Self-Portraits.
The “Vero Stoppioni” Contemporary Art Gallery in Santa Sofia hosts the third stage of the anthology cycle Mattia Moreni. From His Training Years to the Final Tremor Before the Great Mutation, dedicated to the theme of self-portraiture. The exhibition path explores the research and expressive complexity of one of the most original and vibrant figures in Italian art of the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting the artist’s relationship with himself, with tradition, and with the transformations of his time.
The project involves several museum venues across Romagna and was conceived as a collective tribute to Mattia Moreni—an artist who moved independently through the major artistic currents of the twentieth century, from Neo-Cubism to Art Informel, never adhering to them passively and always maintaining a radical, experimental approach. For the Santa Sofia stage, the focus is on self-portraits, explored through more than twenty-five works, including large-scale pieces and several masterpieces from the Gallery’s collection, such as the sculpture La mistura, donated by the artist after the exhibition promoted by the Premio Campigna and now one of the most significant cores of the public heritage dedicated to Moreni.
Within the cycle Il regressivo consapevole (The Conscious Regressive), Moreni develops a furious, sensual, and chaotic language that transforms Neo-Expressionism into a form of pictorial urgency and critical reflection. Between 1985 and 1997 he produced 152 self-portraits—an output that, in both quality and quantity, places him among the absolute masters of the genre. In his works, the self-portrait becomes a field of experimentation: the face is distorted, hybridized, disguised, and contaminated by technology and by the fears of the time, becoming a stage for the collapse of Humanism and a laboratory for an identity shifting toward the post-human.
Moreni pays homage to masters such as Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Ensor, Goya, and Munch, turning the self-portrait into a spiritual and pictorial battleground. Like a scientist or an alchemist, he explores his own corporeality, weaving together gesture, image, and concept, creating works in which emotional intensity, physicality, and critical reflection coexist in a dynamic balance.
The anthology cycle unfolds across multiple museum venues in Romagna, each focusing on specific phases of Moreni’s production, from his early years to the period of the Regression of the Species and the Humanoids. The project is accompanied by a catalogue featuring images and entries on the exhibited works, documenting the artist’s entire career in a coherent and comprehensive way.
