Animae Salvae

Galleria d’arte La Fonderia is pleased to present Animae Salvae, a solo exhibition by Giuseppe Barilaro, opening on Saturday, October 4th and on view until November 22nd, 2025. Curated by gallery director Niccolò Mannini with critical contributions by Elisa Perissinotti, the exhibition brings together a selection of works spanning different periods of the artist’s career.

Animae Salvae represents a deep exploration into Giuseppe Barilaro’s artistic identity — a materially intense and visually unsettling painting practice that assaults the gaze only to leave it suspended, vulnerable. From clerical effigies to biblical references and apsidal compositions, the exhibition provocatively challenges religious imagery and doctrinal rhetoric, questioning the very notion of salvation. Yet, these pictorial settings conceal no moralizing intent: far from didacticism, Barilaro “paints out of necessity.” His pictorial gesture emerges from the tension between visceral expressive urgency and the pursuit of formal rigor, transfiguring reality through the materialization of his inner visions.

The title Animae Salvae, inspired by De André and Fossati’s 1996 album, becomes above all a key to understanding solitude as a premise for creative and emotional fertility — not mere marginalization from society, but a salvific condition from its endless contradictions. On one hand, it expresses adherence to “a state of tranquility of the soul that allows one to surrender to the absolute, to its images and voices, both inner and outer, without artificial imprints.” On the other, the very subjects portrayed — stripped of face and identity — inhabit a timeless, stage-like void, becoming symbols of humanity and mirrors of conscience. The absence of a single interpretation leaves room for multiple personal narratives: rather than explaining, art suggests and evokes. Thus, while Barilaro restores to painting its poetic and imaginative power, the freedom of the gaze becomes the only true form of salvation.