5 JUNE – 19 OCTOBER 2025
VILLA MALPENSATA, SPAZIO CIELO
The seventh event in the “Global Aesthetics” series presents the works of Mr. Savethewall (artistic name of Pierpaolo Perretta) in the Spazio Cielo of Villa Malpensata. The Italian artist presents 38 portraits of modern and contemporary artists and a self-portrait, all created with spray paint and stencils, a technique typical of street art reinterpreted here on canvas. This is a research project by MUSEC, which, together with the artist, has conducted a careful reflection on the value of the portraits in the famous Giovani gallery. The title of the project, ELOGIA MMXXV, is an explicit reference to the Elogi di uomini illustri (Praising of Illustrious Men) written in Latin between 1546 and 1551 by Paolo Giovio, a great humanist famous for his gallery of over 400 portraits of philosophers, writers, artists and powerful figures of the time, collected in his villa on Lake Como. Pierpaolo Perretta has decided to pay homage to the 38 portraits in the Giovio art gallery preserved in the Civic Museums of Como by recreating a personal gallery of portraits of artists in 2025, chosen for their particular significance in the development of his own artistic identity.
The portraits play on allusion and dissimulation: artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Amedeo Modigliani, Lucio Fontana, Frida Kahlo and Niki de Saint-Phalle (to name but five) are black silhouettes on canvas, to which the addition of iconic elements from their work, graphic or figurative, attests to their identity while evoking other possible meanings. Each of the 39 works, one of which is presented in 15 variations, is accompanied by a short poetic text that guides the viewer’s interpretation, the result of a critical conversation between the artist and Francesco Paolo Campione, director of MUSEC.
Pierpaolo Perretta, aka Mr. Savethewall, was born in Como in 1972. After an executive career in Confartigianato, he embarked on an artistic path inspired by international Street Art, soon earning the nickname “Italian Banksy”. Distinguished by the use of mobile media and a respectful approach to urban space, Mr. Savethewall creates ironic and conceptual works that mix pop culture, social reflection and provocation.
Since 2013, he has dedicated himself to the study of the wall as a communication tool, creating iconic works such as The White Mill Family Doesn’t Exist, Holy iPad, Kiss Me, as well as the famous Wallsaved, works created on wooden panels where the artist faithfully reproduces the surfaces of urban walls. In 2018, on the occasion of Banksy’s exhibition at MUDEC in Milan, he signed an impactful urban action: the Manifesto of the End of Street Art, a critical intervention on the musealisation of the movement. Mr. Savethewall continues today to question the relationship between art, society and public spaces, with a recognisable style and an identity that is now autonomous in the Italian art scene.
Global Aesthetics is a project dedicated to exploring the relationship between contemporary art and the ideological and cultural context in which it moves.
By its very nature, it envisages the confrontation and interaction of the different disciplines with which contemporary creativity can be read, and thus offers itself as a tested methodology capable of reconciling the different perspectives at play.
