From 26 October to 19 December 2026, Fondazione ICA Milano presents L’Addio, the first institutional exhibition in Italy by Leonardo Devito (Florence, 1997) curated by Chiara Nuzzi, staged in the Project Room of the foundation.

Designed specifically for the institution’s spaces, the project features four large-scale paintings and two recently produced ceramic bas-reliefs. These six works occupy the hall and extend beyond its boundaries, spreading into the corridors and adjacent rooms, thereby creating a narrative and spatial continuity between images, architecture, and memory.

L’Addio depicts a transition: the moment when one leaves what has, until then, been known as ‘home’ to distance oneself from the emotional and material security of family and face the freedom and uncertainty of adulthood. This individual experience, in Devito’s work, transcends the strictly autobiographical dimension to become a symbol of a shared transformation: separation, maturity, and the search for one’s true self.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Addio, the song performed by Giuni Russo in the early 1980s and written by Franco Battiato and Ippolita Avalli. The lyrics of the song weave through the works, providing the project with a narrative structure that accompanies the transition from the sheltered world of the home to the moment of separation.

Chiara Nuzzi, curator of the exhibition, explains: ‘The first time I encountered a painting by Leonardo Devito, I suddenly felt torn and suspended: one part of me was transported back to childhood […] while the other was caught up in the urgency of the present, chasing and recognizing sensations and moods.’

Anticipation, unease, uncertainty, and mystery—infused with subtle irony—define Devito’s visual universe. Human and animal figures, domestic interiors, architecture, and suspended landscapes come together to create images where memory and the present, personal experience and imagination, continually converge.

At the heart of the artist’s practice lies the image itself: it may originate from an autobiographical experience, a story, a memory, or a pre-existing imaginary world. However, it is painting that transforms the image, constantly questioning its meanings and possibilities. The individual works are not isolated episodes but parts of a broader narrative in which dreams and memories construct a shared space and time.

As Leonardo Devito explains: ‘Not everything takes place exclusively in the mind; when I begin to paint, the painting itself takes center stage. Color guides the mental image, expands it, transforms it, and exhausts it, even to the point of completely overturning its meaning. It is always the painting, in relation to the image, that has the final word and pulls the strings of the narrative.’

The narrative of L’Addio unfolds through images and moments that together form a poignant tale of separation. In Casa, the swallows evoked by Giuni Russo’s song fly across a sky dominated by the presence of a large black crow—possibly a self-portrait of the artist: a figure still tied to the warmth of family life and, at the same time, eager to take flight. Fuga, on the other hand, creates a tension between stillness and movement. A young woman sits on the bed with a melancholic expression, while in the shadow some surreal figures resembling small animals seem to writhe, attempting to escape the stillness of the scene. Outside the window, flames introduce an element of urgency, transforming the domestic space into a place on the verge of abandonment.

In the painting L’Addio, the moment of departure takes shape: a young man walks away with a cigarette between his fingers, not looking back. This gesture is both liberating and uncertain, as leaving home marks the beginning of a new phase in life.

The two ceramic works, Testa Casa and Dormiglione, bring the narrative back to its most oneiric element. In the former, the dream-memory of a house contains a shell within it—an image that evokes both protection and a sense of home; in Dormiglione, the subject is absorbed in sleep, still sheltered by the walls of the home.

The relationship between image and narrative permeates Devito’s entire body of work and is rooted, in part, in his focus on medieval Christian and Renaissance culture and on a tradition in which images were designed to make stories, meanings, and moral systems visible and accessible.

The artist draws upon this narrative and unifying potential, entrusting painting with the power to create new allegorical forms.

Devito’s artistic influences include Mario Sironi, Felice Casorati and Giorgio De Chirico, whose impact is particularly evident in his focus on empty spaces, architecture, and suspended settings. These influences are complemented by literature: the Kafkaesque atmospheres and imaginary worlds of Italo Calvino and Dino Buzzati contribute to the construction of a multi-layered visual vocabulary, populated by human and animal figures, domestic interiors, and often desolate landscapes.

The result is a body of work in which the narrative does not lead to a definitive resolution but maintains the tension between what is left behind and what remains unknown: the uncertain space of farewell.

Fondazione ICA Milano thanks Intesa Sanpaolo, main sponsor of the foundation, Valsoia and Enel for their support of ICA Milano’s programme and activities.

The exhibition Leonardo Devito. L’Addio is made possible thanks to the support of Eni as Main Partner.

We would like to thank Ciaccia Levi gallery for its support of the exhibition Leonardo Devito. L’Addio.

LEONARDO DEVITO

Leonardo Devito (born in 1997 in Florence) lives and works in Turin. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and obtained a master’s degree in fine arts from the Accademia Albertina in Turin. His recent solo exhibitions include Scary Monsters, Hauser & Wirth, Paris; Candide (with Domenico Gnoli), Drawing Week Milano, Ciaccia Levi, Milan, 2024; Teatrino, Ciaccia Levi, Paris, 2024; and a solo presentation at LISTE in Basel with the Ciaccia Levi gallery in June 2025. Group exhibitions include Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, Alison Jacques, London, 2025; and X Collection 202: Portrait of a Man, X Museum, Beijing, 2024.