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One hundred years after the painter’s death
and almost a century since the last monographic exhibition dedicated to him,
the Fondazione Ragghianti presents
Emilio Malerba (1878-1926)
From his beginnings to the Novecento Italiano
curated by Paolo Bolpagni and Elena Pontiggia
Lucca, Fondazione Ragghianti
28 February – 7 June 2026
The Fondazione Centro Studi sull’Arte Licia e Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti announces the first major monographic exhibition dedicated to Emilio Malerba (Milan, 1878-1926) in the modern era, a decisive yet still relatively unknown figure in the Italian art scene of the first half of the 20th century.
Scheduled to take place in Lucca from 28 February to 7 June 2026 in the exhibition halls of the Fondazione Ragghianti, the exhibition “Emilio Malerba (1878-1926). From his beginnings to the Novecento Italiano”, curated by Paolo Bolpagni and Elena Pontiggia and organised in collaboration with the Archivio Malerba in Monza, with the decisive support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, will offer – through a large collection of works, original posters and documents – a comprehensive reflection on the artist’s life on the centenary of his death, and almost a century after the last retrospective dedicated to him, dating back to 1931.
The exhibition will follow Malerba’s artistic career from his early years and from the evocative Belle Époque posters to his post-Scapigliatura, Novecento and purist works, presenting a large number of previously unseen pieces, which have come to light thanks to recent research and will be exhibited for the first time at the Fondazione Ragghianti.
The exhibition is completed by works created by other artists from the initial core group of the “Novecento” movement, namely Anselmo Bucci, Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi, Piero Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Sironi, as well as a portrait of Malerba painted by Primo Sinopico in 1917, thus exploring the nuances and visions of a group that never fully conformed stylistically.
After his early days linked to the late Scapigliatura movement and his success in the field of advertising graphics, Malerba defined a more solid and personal style of painting in 1916, arriving in 1920 at that precise and suspended form that critics would recognise as Magical Realism. In 1922, he was one of the founders of the Novecento group, but his intense expressive research was abruptly interrupted by an incurable illness that struck him three years later.
Despite his short career, Malerba managed to develop a highly refined poetic style, centred on the exploration of “truth”, understood not as simple realism, but as the revelation of the inner dimension of figures and objects. His protagonists and his universe of small things convey an intimate, domestic, cosy world, in which an introverted and delicate sensibility emerges from everyday life.
After training at the Brera Academy, Emilio Malerba made his debut in 1906 with works reminiscent of late Scapigliatura, including landscapes and portraits of evanescent subjects. He later distinguished himself above all for his advertising posters, which evoked the world of the Belle Époque. Those on display at the Fondazione Ragghianti include posters designed for Amaro Ramazzotti in Milan and for the Italian department store E. & A. Mele & C. in Naples, which reveal the artist’s interest in the female figure and its representation, subsequently aimed at expressing the inner life of the subjects rather than their physical appearance.
From 1916 onwards, the artist defined his painting in a more structured way, so much so that in 1922 he exhibited a series of paintings at the 13th Venice Biennale, including the famous “Le maschere” (1922), featured in the Lucca exhibition, which highlights Malerba’s affinity with the new movement of Magical Realism, where the meticulous rendering of the world paradoxically reveals its mysterious and elusive essence. A sensitivity that also emerges in works such as “Portrait of a Young Girl” (1919) or “Femmina volgo” (1920), in which the subjects become clearer yet elusive, immersed in everyday contexts but secretly enchanted. Now, as later, Malerba’s imagery is that of domestic intimacy, family confidences, lives that do not go beyond the confines of a room, women, girls and teenagers immersed in their own little universe, which reveals, behind the veil of everyday existence, the delicacy of feelings and the introverted sensitivity that animates his protagonists.
In 1922, Malerba, together with six other colleagues, including Mario Sironi and Achille Funi, was among the founders of the “Novecento” movement, a group created with the critical support of Margherita Sarfatti and linked to the need for a “return to order” in art after the avant-garde experiments of the 1910s, recovering classical antiquity and harmony in composition as a reference point. Works such as “Nude with Roe Deer” (1923-1924), “Girls at the Piano” (1924) and “The Friends” (1924) show an even more marked volumetric rendering of the bodies, with bold shapes and colours, which Malerba constructs with solemn and monumental tones.
In 1926, after months of illness, the artist died prematurely: the epilogue to a short but significant career, in which the painter managed to prove his stature as an artist through an investigation of reality that did not coincide with realism, but with the search for the secret essence of life and those who live it.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Edizioni Fondazione Ragghianti Studi sull’arte, featuring historical and critical essays by the curators and by Daniela Ferrari, reproductions and scientific descriptions of the works on display, and extensive biographical and bibliographical notes.
As co-curator Elena Pontiggia states, «the retrospective “Emilio Malerba (1878-1926). From his beginnings to the Novecento Italiano” will feature many important unpublished works, discovered during research for the monograph on the artist» published by her in 2024. The exhibition, emphasises Paolo Bolpagni, director of the Fondazione Ragghianti and co-curator, «will be an event of exceptional importance, continuing in the wake of the rediscovery of Italian artists from the first half of the 20th century already undertaken by the Fondazione Ragghianti in 2022 with the successful exhibition on Leonardo Dudreville, who, together with Malerba, was one of the founders of the “Novecento” group».
Lucca, December 2025