Space Outside, dedicated to one of the greatest protagonists of contemporary sculpture. Curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Marco Tonelli, in collaboration with the Fondazione Progetti Beverly Pepper of Todi, the exhibition brings together 36 works, including sculptures, sketches, drawings, watercolors, and sketchbooks, enriched by an extensive array of images and videos.
The journey, which covers over fifty years of activity (1965-2018), is not a traditional retrospective, but rather an exploration of the themes that have made the artist's research unique: the relationship between art and environment, memory, and the sense of community. The exhibition centers on two monumental sculptures from the Unipol collection—Prisms (1967–1968) and Virgo Rectangle Twist (1967)—displayed at Porta Europa and the Unipol Tower, respectively. These works mark Pepper's decisive shift toward public art as a space for inclusion, experience, and sharing. Alongside them, drawings and projects testify to the artist's ongoing dialogue between scale, thought, and form.
Pepper develops his idea of land art and "anti-monument"
Places that are not celebratory but collective, where memory becomes a shared experience. A vision that will lead to the definition of a true Connective Art, capable of transforming the work into a welcoming and relational environment. In a present marked by uncertainty and disorientation, her work maintains extraordinary strength: it reminds us that public art is never simply an object, but an opportunity for encounter and mutual recognition. This is demonstrated by the Amphisculpture, a theater donated to L'Aquila in 2018, conceived as a place of rebirth after the 2009 earthquake and today a symbol of resilience and community. This, like all of Beverly Pepper's works, is a querencia: a term that indicates, in the arena, the place where the bull finds protection from the matador and, more broadly, the space that offers refuge and safety, fostering introspection and awareness.
The exhibition project
A mosaic of images that depicts the artist at work, sometimes with short hair in the foundry—where, to learn casting techniques, she came to call herself George—sometimes portrayed as a muse before her monumental sculptures. The Bologna exhibition thus retraces the moments in which the research of Pepper—American by birth but Italian by adoption, living in Todi from 1972 until her death—transformed sculpture into landscape, architecture, and, above all, collective experience. A journey through forms, materials, and visions that continue to speak to the present, inviting us to rediscover belonging and connection with the natural and urban environment. To complete the course, CUBO is organizing a study day on November 27, 2025, with contributions from Andrea Pinotti, Loris Cecchini, Marco Tonelli, and Arianna Bettarelli, coordinated by Ilaria Bignotti.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with texts by curators Ilaria Bignotti and Marco Tonelli, and by Arianna Bettarelli, head of the Fondazione Progetti Beverly Pepper archive.
