Giuseppe Veneziano, one of the leading figures of New Pop and Italian Newbrow, is the protagonist of “Ogni favola è un gioco” [A Tale Is a Game], his highly anticipated solo show at Galleria PUNTO SULL’ARTE. The exhibition opens with a vernissage on Saturday, November 29, from 11:00 to 13:00, at the gallery’s main location in Varese (Viale Sant’Antonio 59/61). The artist and curator Ivan Quaroni will be in attendance.
Giuseppe Veneziano (born 1971 in Mazzarino) lives and works between Milan and Pietrasanta (LU). Trained as an architect, he has devoted himself entirely to art and established himself as a leading figure in New Pop and Italian Newbrow. His painting fuses pop culture, art history, and current affairs, often through provocative iconographic mash-ups. He has participated in the 54th Venice Biennale (Italy Pavilion, 2011), the Italy-China Biennale (2012), the Prague Biennale (2009), the Saint Petersburg Biennale (2008), and Artathlos for the Beijing Olympics (2008). His work has been shown in public venues such as the Triennale di Milano, Museo RISO in Palermo, MART in Rovereto, Museo Civico di Trento, Musei Capitolini in Rome, Museo Pecci in Prato, Palazzo Ducale in Massa, Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna, and the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. He has exhibited in numerous Italian and international galleries, including in London, Munich, and New York. Known for its visual impact and communicative power, Veneziano’s work engages with irony and intelligent critique of contemporary themes and myths.
Veneziano has long practiced painting that metabolizes existing images, transforming them into new iconographic interweavings and original narratives. His visual language blends Western tradition with contemporary popular culture, creating a theatre of imagery where apparent innocence collides with the adult codes of religion, fashion, and current events. In this new body of work, fairy tales—often filtered through reinterpretations of Disney cinema—hold a privileged position, inviting viewers into a dynamic visual stage.
The show’s title, drawn from a 1983 song by Edoardo Bennato, suggests reading fairy tales as narrative systems that illuminate the ambiguous, contradictory nature of society. In painterly terms, Veneziano revisits a tradition that intersects music, literature, folklore, and visual arts, turning fairy tales into parables of contemporary inquietudes, as well as the hidden desires and impulses of modern life.
Snow White stands as a central figure in his repertoire, transformed into a fetish that mirrors shifts in collective fashion. In the exhibited works, the Disney princess appears in unsettling and provocative forms: a vengeance-seeking heroine in “The Massacre of the Innocents” (2022), a sensual and contemporary figure in “Selfica<” (2021), and an ironic dominatrix in “Fifty Shades of Pluto” (Cinquanta sfumature di Pippo) (2022). Pinocchio returns repeatedly, as in “Madonna of Lies” (2022) and “Venus of Collodi” (2023), where his image intertwines with Renaissance traditions and classical iconography.
“Little Red Riding Hood” and “Alice” also emerge as emblematic figures, relocated to the present moment. In In the “Wolf’s Mouth” (In bocca al lupo) (2023), the works allude to the symbolic and psychoanalytic roots of fairy tales, while “Alice Wonder Social” (2025) translates Carroll’s wonder into digital scrolling.
Veneziano’s painted works converse with three-dimensional and installation pieces, such as “The Murder of Grumpy” (2021) and “Innocent Escapes” (Innocenti evasioni, 2015), reaffirming the artist’s narrative and pop sensibility. His language remains direct and recognizable: flat color fields, crisp outlines, and vibrant chromatic palettes that illuminate without simplifying complexity, using clarity as a tool of perturbation and ironic revelation.
“Ogni favola è un gioco” presents fairy tales freed from pedagogical functions, transformed into allegories of contemporary life and figures of a modern Commedia Humana.
Photo credits: The gallery is the owner
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