Pietro Costa, /ri.tràt.ti/ / ˈpôrˌtrāts / , curated by Chiara Spangaro, presents for the first time to the public the selection of the portraits made by the artist between 2018 and 2022. Praetorium from 23 April to 31 July, enhances the artist's bond with Prato, the city where he worked on the first family portrait, Gori Family Portrait (in 2019) which spans three generations, starting with the patriarch Giuliano Gori, founder of the Fattoria di Celle, historical collector and patron of Prato. On display there will also be other portraits depicting individuals and families, such as those of the father-son couple made up of Gianni and Sandro Veronesi, and of other subjects, both from Prato and elsewhere.

The works represent a more up-to-date selection from the Bloodworks series, which the artist has undertaken since the late 1980s, and are performed with the blood of the portrayed subject, which is used as a pigment between two sheets of mylar. Pietro Costa creates a visceral bond with his works, creating portraits that capture the essence - even biological - of his subjects, in which the image merges with the substance, until it becomes one with it. Originally from Cilento, and then moved to New York in 1972, Costa trained at the School of Visual Arts, in an artistic environment in full swing, in contact with artists such as Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat. A multifaceted artist, with a thousand facets: his art is a free expression, a vision without borders, which crosses geographically and culturally different cultures, religions and traditions.

In this context, the theme of identity is central to his work. "With one foot in one nation and one in another, one foot in a century and one in another, one foot in a millennium and one in another", as he defines himself, Costa wondered how to make a self-portrait in this time and place of history, and to look for the answer he drew on his own body, taking his blood and using it as artistic material. Starting from self-portrait and self-representation, the artist has subsequently enriched his gallery by including the blood of relatives and friends, then opening it to acquaintances and strangers and to those family and affective communities whose stories and roots have crossed his personal experience and his artistic production. An artistic corpus, in the true sense of the term, which has expanded and varied for more than thirty years, and which reflects the artist's interest in the biological trace that the human being leaves in the world and on the correspondence with the permanence of his memory, personal or public.