Castello Aragonese d'Ischia

The FONDAZIONE KARIN E GABRIELE MATTERA, is pleased to announce GABRIELE MATTERA. ANCHORITE AND CONTEMPORARY ARTIST, an exhibition—curated by Jana Curcenco—that will reexamine Gabriele’s work in all its complexity.

The exhibition will be held at the Church of the Immaculate Conception and other spaces within the Aragonese Castle of Ischia, from May 16 to June 16, 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

For the first time, Gabriele’s work is reinterpreted in all its complexity, bringing together paintings from different series to reveal his nature as an artist physically set apart from the world and, for that very reason, capable of a broader vision. The solitude of the individual in the face of life is the central theme of his painting, recurring throughout every phase of his work and brought into focus here.

 

 

 

 

In 2026, the time has come to look again at the work of Gabriele Mattera (Ischia, 1929–2005) with fresh eyes. A painter, but also a ceramicist, watercolourist, exhibition curator and restorer of the Castle, he never ceased to believe in painting throughout his life. He chose it as his primary medium at a time when it was being sidelined by the international avant-garde. He put it to the test, renewed it and continually questioned it. The human figure lays at the heart of his research, from the 1950s—when he was self-taught within the artistic circles of Ischia— until the end. The exhibition invites viewers to rediscover a form of painting that is at once contemporary and timeless.

 

Nourished by modern European and North American painting, by the French and German avant-gardes as well as by seventeenth-century Spanish painting, he drew deeply on this visual culture, translating it into recurring motifs developed in series: Pescatori (Fishermen), Bagnanti (Bathers), Tende (Tents), Uomini nella natura (Men in the Nature), Uomini in rosso (Men in Red) and Blu della notte (Blue of the Night). While it is relevant to dwell on these series—which are, above all, iconographic obsessions explored through variations until the motif is exhausted—it is equally compelling to trace the development of a painter who looked as much to Cézanne as to Morandi, to Matisse as to Rouault, to Giacometti as to Bacon, but also—and with particular significance—to the German (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner), the Austrian (Egon Schiele) and the American Expressionists (Willem de Kooning). Mattera was a contemporary artist who engaged with modern masters. In his individual path, he remained at a distance from the international avant-garde movements of his time (Arte Povera, Transavanguardia), leaving behind paintings of remarkable originality, restraint and depth. The result is a body of work that is independent, pared back and of great depth.