Agnese Tonelli
Exhibition manager, Rocca di Dozza Museum
At times delicate, almost imperceptible, at others resolute and deeply engraved, the line traced by Omar Galliani moves toward a single horizon: beauty. A beauty at once pure and silent, then suddenly profound and luminous. Galliani’s pencil glides sinuously across paper and wood, pursuing an idea of perfection untouched by time. Roses, faces, anatomies — every subject appears suspended between memory and dream, belonging to no precise era and yet to all of them.
The works gathered within these rooms speak of an almost devotional attention to every gesture of the hand, every vibration of light and shadow, every elusive nuance concealed within the subject portrayed. The feminine figure and spirit — central to the Maestro’s poetics and here evoked through the symbolic presence of Matilda of Canossa — emerge beside, and at times through, the image of the rose and the heart.
The heart: primordial emblem of feeling, silent engine of life itself.
The rose: sovereign flower, ancient symbol of love, beauty, and passion.
Yet Galliani does not reveal the flower through its most familiar image. Instead, he unveils its hidden essence — perhaps even its soul — through the patient rendering of stems, leaves, and thorns, suggesting that a rose may fully exist even without displaying its blossom. In the same way, femininity here reveals its grace and strength beyond every outward form, inhabiting a space deeper than appearance itself.
Rendered in pencil, pastel, and ink upon paper, silk paper, and poplar wood, these works intensify the dialogue between fragility and permanence through their very materials: the ethereal lightness of paper opposing the grounded, tactile solidity of wood.
Everything appears to unfold around the fragrance and inner energy emanating from both the flower and the feminine spirit: a subtle and evocative weave of signs, intimate yet iconic, unfolding like a fable whispered across centuries until it becomes ritual, memory, inheritance.
And as within every ancient tale, Galliani entwines light and darkness, tenderness and severity, fragility and strength, in an endless dance forever seeking balance — a fragile equilibrium that recalls images long embedded within our collective imagination.
Lisa Emiliani
President of Fondazione Dozza Città d’Arte
An Experience of Contemplation
Omar Galliani stands among the most authoritative voices in the international contemporary art landscape. To host a solo exhibition of his work within the ancient walls of the Rocca Sforzesca is not simply an honour, but the culmination of a shared vision through which this Council has sought to shape an exhibition programme defined by identity, distinction, and artistic excellence.
The exhibition, evocatively entitled Fiabeska, opens onto a suspended and timeless dimension in which archetypal symbols enter into silent dialogue with history itself. Within this space, works of extraordinary formal refinement unfold through an artistic language that is both intimate and monumental. The result of decades of research, Galliani’s practice explores drawing as a place of knowledge — a threshold capable of moving beyond the visible to become a space of imagination, memory, and inner vision.
The tension toward the ideal never resolves into form alone; rather, it reveals itself as a continuous oscillation between control and abandon, precision and restlessness. At the heart of this suspended universe lies the feminine presence, echoing a symbolic lineage that traverses centuries. Galliani’s figures embody strength and delicacy in equal measure, inhabiting a fragile equilibrium where interiority becomes visible and drawing acquires an almost revelatory power.
Fiabeska ultimately unfolds as an experience of contemplation and quiet listening, where time itself seems to dissolve and images re-emerge like fragments of a shared memory. Between formal rigour and poetic resonance, the exhibition recalls the reflections of Ernst Gombrich on the origin and mystery of the image.
Omar Galliani
Wednesday, April 22 — 11:30 a.m.
“9 Roses and an Infinity of Thorns…”
Nine roses and an infinity of thorns have long inhabited my drawings. Today they align themselves upon the walls of this castle, where I reveal these hidden flowers to you.
I chose works both distant and near, so that together they might tell a story — an ancient fable, timeless as the tale of a child searching for a kite once drawn, many years ago, upon the wall of another castle: a castle without enclosing walls, open entirely to the sky, where clouds dissolved slowly into the blue of what came after.
A small drawing opens this song within Laura’s hands and carries it through time, across rivers, lakes, and oceans that have witnessed my journeys unfolding between East and West.
I dedicate this exhibition to all the works never realised — works that, like every true fable, leave at the end of the final line the longing to begin again.
Omar Galliani
Biographical summary
Born in Montecchio Emilia in 1954, Omar Galliani is among the leading figures of contemporary Italian drawing. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, he taught at the academies of Urbino, Carrara, and Brera, while developing a visual language that would become unmistakably his own: refined, meditative, suspended between Renaissance memory and contemporary vision.
Invited in 1979 to the first International Drawing Triennial in Nuremberg, Galliani soon became associated with the movements Magico Primario and Anacronismo, alongside critics and historians such as Flavio Caroli, Maurizio Calvesi, and Italo Tomassoni. During the 1980s he participated in multiple editions of the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, establishing an international presence through exhibitions spanning São Paulo, Tokyo, Paris, and Prague.
Across decades of work, Galliani has transformed drawing into a space of contemplation and revelation, where images emerge slowly from darkness like memories resurfacing through time. His artistic journey has unfolded between East and West through exhibitions and collaborations in China, South Korea, Europe, and the United States, weaving distant cultural visions into a singular poetic language.
Among the most significant moments of his career are the creation of Siderea for the historic Teatro Romolo Valli, documented by Luigi Ghirri; the acquisition of works by institutions such as the Uffizi Galleries and the Vatican Museums; and major exhibitions held in venues ranging from the Caffè Florian in Venice to the Palazzo Reale in Milan.
His works inhabit a suspended territory where drawing becomes vision, silence, and meditation — a place in which beauty is never merely represented, but patiently revealed.
IG: @omar_galliani