From Thursday 28 October 2022 to Saturday 28 January 2023 , the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation presents a new exhibition project dedicated to a fundamental figure in the history of contemporary art: Paul Thek (New York, US 1933-1988). “Paul Thek. Italian Hours” , curated by Peter Benson Miller , was born from the collaboration between the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation, the Watermill Center, Alexander and Bonin, New York, and the Estate of George Paul Thek.

A series of recent studies has shed new light on Paul Thek's complex and enduring relationship with Italy and the fundamental impact that country has had on his work , characterized by an innovative, genre-defying practice, drawing on a large variety of different media. Taking these premises into account, “Paul Thek. Italian Hours ” which presents the work of Paul Thek in Italy for the first time since 1995, brings together a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures - including the vestiges of his most famous work, now lost, entitled The Tomb - made on the basis of the influences drawn from his experiences in Rome, Sicily and on the island of Ponza between 1962 and 1975.

Returning to Italy repeatedly, Thek reworks the stimuli deriving from his Italian discoveries, from the visit to archaeological sites, to the funeral practices still in place, from the spectacular religious processions, to the elements that characterize the Italian landscape, producing a Baroque response to Pop Art and to minimalism and their predilection for industrial production, which dominated the contemporary art scene.