This exhibition comprises nine recent paintings by the young Italian figurative painter Margherita Manzelli. Her paintings typically depict portraits of young women which Manzelli has met or encountered on the street. Painting from memory, Manzelli alters the proportion of their features and reduces the figures to their bare essentials. They exude inner anguish, appearing as examples of specific stages in the course of a woman’s life. Her early work had a performative element and while this is now less prominent, her work still retains the artist’s presence in the form of her distorted, eerie portraits.

Born in 1968 in Ravenna, Margherita Manzelli is one of the most important young Italian painters working today. Her works have been featured in a number of group and solo shows in Italy, including Castello di Rivoli, Turin, and Studio Guenzani via Farini, Milan, and internationally at the Whitechapel, London; greengrassi, London; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve, and VI São Paolo Bienal, Brazil, 2002.

The exhibition is curated by Paolo Colombo, MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome and, Rachael Thomas, Acting Head of Exhibitions, IMMA. It is a co-production of MAXXI and IMMA.

A catalogue, in English and Italian, published by Charta, Milan, accompanies the exhibition.