Mario Giacomelli

On 20 May, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma opens the exhibition Mario Giacomelli.

The Photographer and the Artist, produced and organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with the Archivio Mario Giacomelli, to mark the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest masters of Italian photography.
Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Katiuscia Biondi Giacomelli, the exhibition is presented simultaneously in Rome and Milan (at Palazzo Reale), offering two complementary itineraries that explore the many facets of Giacomelli’s artistic practice.

The exhibition brings together an extensive selection spanning the artist’s entire photographic career, highlighting his extraordinary ability to cross boundaries and engage in dialogue with different artistic disciplines.
At Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, the exhibition unfolds as a sequence of thematic rooms, each presenting a dialogue between selected photographic series by Mario Giacomelli and the work of five leading figures in modern and contemporary art: Afro Basaldella, Alberto Burri, Jannis Kounellis, Enzo Cucchi, and Roger Ballen.

At the heart of the exhibition is a gallery entirely devoted to Giacomelli’s celebrated series Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto (I Have No Hands That Caress My Face, 1961–1963), the body of work that established his international reputation in the early 1960s.
Conceived as a true installation, the gallery recreates the energy and circular movement that animate the series, emphasizing its performative dimension.
The photographs of young seminarians, suspended between playfulness and spirituality, become pure visual poetry, continuing to move and engage viewers today with their timeless emotional intensity