Thomas Lange's First Italian Retrospective at ZAC Palermo

The ZAC – Zisa Zona Arti Contemporanee, inside the Cantieri Culturali of Palermo, hosts the first Italian retrospective of German painter Thomas Lange (Berlin, 1957), a key figure of the underground Neue Wilde scene. The exhibition features about seventy large-format paintings, arranged chronologically from the 1970s to today, including cycles such as 'Quadri a Strisce', 'Uomini delle Caverne', 'Il Santo Momento', 'Dopo Caravaggio', 'Melodia Apocalittica', 'Golgota', and 'Vera Icona'. Unseen works from Lange's studio include family portraits and depictions of his partner Mutso Hirano, displayed in a labyrinthine layout at the hangar's center. A monumental 2017 canvas dedicated to Frederick II of Swabia, with Lange's self-portrait superimposed on the emperor's sanguine features, pays homage to Palermo's Arab-Norman heritage. The exhibition also features a ceramic sculpture installation titled 'Vuoto', created in 2015 for the Fondazione Volume! on the occasion of the 'Passages' show at the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain of Saint-Étienne Métropole. Lange's painting is described as visionary and wild, blending abstraction and figuration, with references to Masaccio, Dürer, and Caravaggio alongside contemporary magazine imagery. The curatorial narrative presents the works as a centrifugal explosion of mystical sensuality converging on the ceramic centerpiece.