From July 12 to December 1, 2024, Brescia celebrates Giuseppe Bergomi (1953), a Brescia artist among the greatest exponents of contemporary figurative sculpture, with a retrospective spread between the cloisters of San Salvatore and Santa Maria in Solario of the Museum of Santa Giulia and the halls of the Grande miglio in Castello.

Giuseppe Bergomi. Sculptures 1982 / 2024, curated by Fondazione Brescia Musei, consists of 84 works in terracotta and bronze, created throughout the artist's career.

The exhibition is part of a broader project dedicated to sculpture in the spaces of the Castle of Brescia, which Fondazione Brescia Musei inaugurated with the exhibition Davide Rivalta. Dreams of Glory (Castle, May 26, 2023 - January 15, 2024), identifying in this iconic place a space to enhance plastic art, in view of the upcoming inauguration of an outdoor sculpture itinerary dedicated to Bruno Romeda and his partner and colleague Robert Courtright.

In Santa Giulia, on the other hand, the dialogue with the spaces of the Unesco Corridor is placed in ideal continuity with the experience of Archaeological Stages, which in the last three years has brought artists such as Francesco Vezzoli, Emilio Isgrò, and Fabrizio Plessi to engage with the architectures of the monumental complex of Santa Giulia and the Archaeological Park.

The incipit and premise of the journey, ordered chronologically, is 1978, the year in which Bergomi, fresh from graduating from the Brera Academy, made his debut at the Galleria dell'Incisione in Brescia with an exhibition of only paintings, one of which, Lyon 1958, an almost hyperrealistic painting that crystallizes three generations - the artist as a child, the father, and the grandmother -, also opens the current exhibition. 

The crucial moment, capable of giving a turning point to his professional history and convincing him to leave painting for the third dimension, was the exhibition Les realismes 1919-1939 at the Centre Beaubourg in Paris, which, as Bergomi himself said, "allowed me to understand that I had fallen into a misunderstanding".