From June 19, 2025 to June 22, 2025

Art Basel 2025 | Galleries

Art Basel 2025 | Messe Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Galleries | Booth E11, Hall 2.0
Public Days: 19 -22 June

Mazzoleni returns to Art Basel’s Galleries Sector this June with the project Theatre as a Place for Art, exploring the question: What is an art fair, if not a stage for performance?

Through the works of renowned 20^th Century Italian masters – Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1 978), Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Alberto Burri (1915-1995), Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), Fausto Melotti (1901-1986), Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013), and Salvo (1947-2015) – the exhibition space transforms into an immersive setting, inviting visitors to experience and interpret. The booth structure, directly inspired by Burri’s original design for Teatro Continuo (1973), serves as both the scenery and wings of the presentation.

“We love the “unreal.” We love everything that reminds us of our life, but that “is not our life.” We love make-believe.”

(Giorgio de Chirico, 1942)

Giorgio de Chirico was a prolific figure in the theatrical arts, collaborating with renowned writers, directors, and musicians, including the likes of Luigi Pirandello, Serge Diaghilev, and Richard Georg Strauss. His first involvement in theatrical production dates back to 1924, when he worked on La Giara by Luigi Pirandello, performed by the Ballets Suédois at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

His entire oeuvre reflects this deep connection with theatrics, as in the iconic Gli archeologi – Amore e Musica (1930s). In this work, two faceless mannequins are seated side by side, each enclosing a metaphysical landscape within their torsos. Their bodies serve as the starting point for a perspectival stage set, composed of archaeological motifs and dreamlike architectural fragments.

Lucio Fontana designed the costumes and set for Portrait of Don Quixote at Teatro alla Scala in 1967. Commentary by Massimo Mila in Espresso Magazine noted that

“Fontana turned the stage into the interior of a huge box, inhabited only by abstract forms.”

This idea of the “box” seems directly connected to Concetto spaziale, Teatrino (1965), which is characterised by ‘wing’-type frames made of lacquered and shaped wood, in uniform colours. These Teatrino works represent a hypothesis of spatial figuration where a monochrome background, pierced with holes, is presented as a kind of “sky”.

Alberto Burri’s passion for theatre, deepened by his marriage to choreographer Minsa Craig, is also evident in his numerous stage designs. Burri’s debut in the performing arts was in 1963 at La Scala in Milan. In 1969, he designed the scenery and costumes for L’avventura di un povero cristiano by Ignazio Silone, presented at the acclaimed Dramma Popolare festival, in San Miniato (Pisa).

The images of the show reveal the artist’s signature use of burlap, combined with red and white plastic combustions, as seen in Rosso Plastica (1968).

Fausto Melotti’s poetic language often echoes the rhythm and abstraction of musical and theatrical composition. In La creazione del mondo (1978), the sculptural elements evoke a stage where myth and material coexist. The figure, part totem, part actor, emerges from golden planes like a character poised for performance, a silent theatre suspended between movement and stillness.

Further emphasising the fair booth as a theatrical stage, Piero Manzoni’s Base Magica – Scultura vivente (originally dated 1961, exhibition copy) will also be exhibited.

Visitors are invited to step onto this pedestal and become protagonists of their own “performance”. “Any person or object placed on it, as long as it remained there, became a work of art,” wrote the artist.

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