“Io sono un santo” is written in cursive on a canvas that has been torn and cut across its surface—one of the earliest examples of Lucio Fontana’s unmistakable artistic gesture. On the reverse, however, appears the phrase “I am a scoundrel,” forming an ironic self-portrait that subverts the idea of the artist as a figure who elevates both themselves and the viewer through art.

The work opens *Tragicomic. Perspectives on Italian Art from the Second Postwar Period to the Present*, the largest exhibition ever dedicated by the MAXXI to contemporary Italian art, produced in collaboration with the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and curated by Andrea Bellini and Francesco Stocchi. The exhibition brings together over 130 artists and 300 works, exploring irony as a defining feature of Italian culture and the tension between the tragic and the comic.

Spanning more than eighty years, the show proposes a non-chronological, dialogic reading of artworks, offering an alternative and layered perspective on the Italian art canon. The project also extends into film, literature, philosophy, theatre, design, and architecture, accompanied by a catalogue published by Marsilio and a programme of public events.