Ernest Pignon-Ernest's Naples street drawings at L'Inguimbertine

Ernest Pignon-Ernest (born 1942) began working in Naples in 1988, drawn by its Greco-Roman and Christian mythologies, Virgil, and the music and history evoked by Italian actor-composer Roberto De Simone. His Naples sojourns proved pivotal, producing some of his most famous street collages. An exhibition at L'Inguimbertine—an 18th-century former hospital founded by Bishop Dom Malachie d'Inguimbert—gathers many of these works. The artist emphasizes that his drawings are not merely displayed in the city but transform the street itself, reactivating its layers of painting, history, mythology, and mortality. For each life-size drawing, the show presents preparatory sketches and photographs of the collage in situ, beginning with a piece inspired by Caravaggio's David and Goliath, featuring the severed heads of Caravaggio and Pasolini. The exhibition opens with a selection from the museum's own collections related to Italy, Naples, Caravaggio, the 1631 Vesuvius eruption, the 1656 plague, and revolts. Museum director Jean-Yves Baudouy notes that among the 18,000 books bequeathed in 1757 by Dom Malachie to his Carpentras townspeople, many concern Naples, reflecting the shared history of the Kingdom of Naples and Provence under the House of Anjou. Also on view is a portrait of Masaniello, the fisherman who sparked the July 7, 1647 popular revolt against the viceroy's food tax, which Pignon-Ernest used as a model for a 1995 drawing. The exhibition runs until November 1, 2026.