Castello di Rivoli – Marisa Merz Exhibition: The Dance of the Hours

An exhibition for the Marisa Merz centenary

From October 29, 2026, to April 4, 2027, the Castello di Rivoli – Museum of Contemporary Art, in the town of Rivoli (Province of Turin), presents Marisa Merz. The Dance of the Hours, a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to one of the most poetic and radical figures of 20th-century Italian art. The exhibition celebrates the artist's centenary (Turin, May 23, 1926 – July 19, 2019), the only female protagonist of the Arte Povera movement. The exhibition is hosted in the evocative Manica Lunga, on the third floor of the Savoy castle that overlooks the Susa Valley at the gates of Turin.

The heart of the exhibition: the return of a 1980 work

The exhibition begins with the reconstruction of E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare (And shipwreck is sweet to me in this sea), an exhibition project that Marisa Merz presented in 1980 at the Tucci Russo gallery in Turin and subsequently at the Venice Biennale. This historic core becomes the structure around which the Rivoli narrative unfolds, focusing on the environmental dimension of Merz's work, her metaphysical visions, and the themes of the sky, flight, and the lunar and spiritual sphere.

A dialogue with contemporary art

Alongside the historic works, the exhibition involves a new generation of artists who engage with the formal and conceptual legacy of Marisa Merz. Announced participants include:

• Leonor Antunes
• Micol Assaël
• Beatrice Bonino
• Miriam Cahn
• Tacita Dean
• Thea Djordjadze
• Lara Favaretto
• Daiga Grantina
• Armineh Negahdari
• Solange Pessoa

A city-wide project across three Turin venues

The Castello di Rivoli exhibition is one chapter of a larger collaborative project realized for the centenary together with the Fondazione Merz and the GAM – Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Turin, with the support of the Fondazione CRT. Each venue offers a different interpretation of Marisa Merz's work: in Rivoli, the environmental and metaphysical dimension; at the Fondazione Merz, the processes of material transformation; and at the GAM, the domestic intimacy and the home-studio as a daily laboratory, featuring the restoration of Living Sculpture (1966). The project is curated by Francesco Manacorda with Marianna Vecellio, Chiara Bertola with Chiara Parisi, and Beatrice Merz with Sébastien Delot.

The Castello di Rivoli

A Savoy residence that is part of the Piedmontese Royal Residences system and one of the most important contemporary art museums in Europe, the Castello di Rivoli combines Juvarra's Baroque architecture with the most current artistic research. Visiting The Dance of the Hours also means discovering the permanent collection and the castle's spaces, in a unique setting within the cultural landscape of Piedmont.