Curated by the artistic director of The Rooms of Photography, Denis Curti, the review Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of the Classic è organized and promoted by Marsilio Arte and the Giorgio Cini Foundation in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York. The exhibition will be displayed in Venice, inside the photography centre Le Stanze della Fotografia, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, from April 10 to January 6, 2026.
The exhibition features 200 never-before-seen images
In the artist's retrospective, Mapplethorpe's search for a perfect sinuosity, a sensual and sacred roundness, emerges, which can be found in the photographs exhibited in Venice of the perfect male and female bodies, as well as in the magnificent images of flowers, revealed in their nudity, true poetic compositions, ambiguous and delicate at the same time.
As curator Denis Curti observes, who are "Mapplethorpe uses photography to reinterpret and renew classical aesthetics, accentuating the dialogue between the living body and the ideal sculpture. The comparison highlights his ability to transpose the perfection and grace of classical sculpture into contemporary photography, through attention to detail and light, creating a bridge between past and present. The statues, dominated by an unfinished sexuality, confront us with the importance of the flesh in seductive language. Mapplethorpe loosens their marble limbs to reveal a sensual beauty that pulsates under tons of rigidity, giving them a new life».
The retrospective exhibits many male nudes that celebrate the body with a hymn to classical perfection, emphasizing strength, sensuality and symmetry through a refined use of light and composition, exploring desire and eroticism and challenging traditional social patterns. Many portraits are presented at the Stanze della Fotografia: from the famous series dedicated to his partner and friend Patti Smith, immortalized in intimate and iconic poses that express her androgynous figure and her vulnerability, to those of Lisa Lyon, bodybuilder and muse of the author, who explore vigor, resistance and femininity, transcending gender conventions. Mapplethorpe captures her sculpted body, celebrating power and beauty through classical aesthetic parameters. Also on display are portraits of Truman Capote, Glenn Close, Richard Gere, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Annie Leibovitz, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Isabella Rossellini (on the cover), Susan Sarandon, Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, and many others. The photographic portrait for Mapplethorpe does not only represent the intimate encounter between two personalities, but a sort of visual altar where the corporeality of the subject is transfigured, made part of a game of desire and possession.
