On the seventieth anniversary of his birth, following the major exhibition at MAXXI L’Aquila, comes the second chapter of the project dedicated to Andrea Pazienza.
The Don’t Always Die, the title of the exhibition, is taken from an interview given by the author to Clive Griffiths in 1988: Pazienza lives on in the masterworks that never fade, in the previously unseen pieces that continue to surface, and in the clear-eyed gaze with which he navigated his own time and imagined the future.
The exhibition follows, in chronological order, his formative years through to his final works. The comic strips unfold across a sequence of rooms arranged around a central core animated by texts, illustrations, and painterly drawings, where a mural — created live during the Comics Fair in Naples in 1987 — is presented for the very first time.
The rhythm of the exhibition is defined by the interplay between word and image, tracing the drawn page back to its founding elements. Pencil sketches, studies, improvisations, and performances on large surfaces enter into dialogue with notes, poems, private letters, and prose of every kind. A wide selection of archival materials — including photographs, films, and audio recordings — reconstructs the creative and nonconformist environment in which the works came into being.
The hundreds of comic strips on display compose an unrepeatable human portrait: characters such as Pentothal, Zanardi, Pertini, and Pompeo have, over time, taken on universal meanings, becoming ever-relevant instruments for describing reality. It is in this correspondence between chronicle and imagination, in the perfect union of text and image, that the secret is revealed as to why Andrea Pazienza is still here.
header: Campofame (tavola 3), 1987, Courtesy of a private collection
On the seventieth anniversary of his birth, following the major exhibition at MAXXI L’Aquila, comes the second chapter of the project dedicated to Andrea Pazienza.
The Don’t Always Die, the title of the exhibition, is taken from an interview given by the author to Clive Griffiths in 1988: Pazienza lives on in the masterworks that never fade, in the previously unseen pieces that continue to surface, and in the clear-eyed gaze with which he navigated his own time and imagined the future.
The exhibition follows, in chronological order, his formative years through to his final works. The comic strips unfold across a sequence of rooms arranged around a central core animated by texts, illustrations, and painterly drawings, where a mural — created live during the Comics Fair in Naples in 1987 — is presented for the very first time.
The rhythm of the exhibition is defined by the interplay between word and image, tracing the drawn page back to its founding elements. Pencil sketches, studies, improvisations, and performances on large surfaces enter into dialogue with notes, poems, private letters, and prose of every kind. A wide selection of archival materials — including photographs, films, and audio recordings — reconstructs the creative and nonconformist environment in which the works came into being.
The hundreds of comic strips on display compose an unrepeatable human portrait: characters such as Pentothal, Zanardi, Pertini, and Pompeo have, over time, taken on universal meanings, becoming ever-relevant instruments for describing reality. It is in this correspondence between chronicle and imagination, in the perfect union of text and image, that the secret is revealed as to why Andrea Pazienza is still here.
header: Campofame (tavola 3), 1987, Courtesy of a private collection
contenuti correlati
PAZ
A playlist curated for the exhibition by Gino Castaldo, journalist and music critic.
Cataloghi della mostra
2026 exhibition’s catalogue
Andrea Pazienza. They Don’t Always Die