Eros and Art Collide in Rovereto Exhibition at Mart

The exhibition 'Arte e eros' at Mart in Rovereto, curated by Stefano Castelli, explores eroticism through the works of four artists: Pierre Klossowski, Carol Rama, Hans Bellmer, and Pierre Molinier. Rather than a mere iconographic survey, the show adopts a Sadean-Bataillean conception of eroticism intertwined with psychoanalysis, linking pleasure and death drive as tools for philosophical self-analysis and radical social rebellion. The core of the exhibition features forty-eight drawings by Pierre Klossowski (Paris, 1905–2001), a key 20th-century intellectual whose works from the 1950s onward complement and replace his writing. Klossowski's drawings depict 19th- and 20th-century erotic tropes, transforming them into familiar yet unsettling images. Carol Rama (Turin, 1918–2015) uses self-investigation as rebellion, addressing bodily and spatial confinement with liberating masochism. Hans Bellmer (Katowice, 1902–Paris, 1975) literalizes Surrealist philosophy of body and object, seeking desire through isolating and mortifying body parts. Pierre Molinier (Agen, 1900–Bordeaux, 1976) is presented in a dark, intimate room where his self-portraits en travesti achieve a grotesque sublime, marking total sacrifice. The exhibition runs at Mart in Rovereto, Italy.