We are delighted to announce the upcoming exhibition GILBERT & GEORGE at Sonnabend Collection Mantova, opening 10 September 2026.
Nearly twenty years after their last major exhibition in Italy, Sonnabend Collection Mantova presents a landmark exhibition dedicated to Gilbert & George, one of the most influential and innovative voices in contemporary art.
Running from 10 September 2026 through 5 April 2027, the exhibition brings together eight landmark works spanning nearly six decades of the artists’ oeuvre. The exhibition traces a journey from Gilbert & George’s early years to the bold photographic compositions that have become synonymous with their distinctive artistic language.
BALE, 2013 (226 x 381 cm) from Gilbert & George’s ‘SCAPEGOATING PICTURES’.
Gilbert & George and Sonnabend…
The link between Gilbert & George and the Sonnabend gallery dates back to 1971, the year in which the famous The Singing Sculpture inaugurated its headquarters in New York, marking the beginning of a human and professional partnership that lasted decades.
Inaugural opening of the Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1971. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah (left). Gilbert & George, The Singing Sculpture presentation for the inaugural exhibition at Sonnabend Gallery, NY, 1971 (right).
Almost twenty years after their last major exhibition in Italy at Castello di Rivoli, Turin, the Sonnabend Collection presents an in-depth focus on Gilbert & George, with a selection of eight emblematic works retracing key moments of nearly sixty years of artistic practice. The exhibition explores recurring themes in their work, from sex and politics to religion, urban identity and mortality.
The exhibition begins with the monumental charcoal drawings of THE BAR II (1972), suspended in a silent, melancholic space. From the 1980s onwards, the gaze shifts towards their iconic, vividly coloured large-scale pictures arranged in geometric grids, before moving across to the provocative and irreverent chapters of Gilbert & George’s 21st-century works. Ranging from PISS OFF! (2014), a cry of visual rebellion against social taboos, to the urban, exasperated restlessness of BALE (2013), and the ironic, surreal visions of BEARDWAY (2016), in which their likenesses are concealed behind the contemporary obsession with beards, transforming them into contemporary pop deities.
