Mazzoleni London is pleased to present Albisola: A Season of Artists, celebrating the rich artistic legacy of Albisola, the Ligurian town that became a crucible of post-war experimentation, collaboration, and ceramic innovation. Timed to coincide with the lead-up to Mazzoleni’s 40th anniversary in 2026, the exhibition explores the personal and historical ties between the town and the Mazzoleni family.
From the 1920s to the 1970s, Albisola attracted artists, poets, critics and collectors from Italy and beyond. Its unique geography, fine local clay, and centuries-old ceramic tradition made it a meeting point where avant-garde creativity flourished alongside artisan skill. The Futurist movement first transformed Albisola into a “free republic of the arts” in the 1930s, thanks to Tullio d’Albisola and his collaborations with modernist artists and designers. After the Second World War, figures including Lucio Fontana, Asger Jorn, Emilio Scanavino, Enrico Baj, Wifredo Lam and Piero Manzoni carried forward this spirit of radical experimentation. Jorn’s 1954 International Ceramics Meeting at the Mazzotti factory sparked what Lou Laurin memorably called an “Albisolamania,” making the town an international hub for artistic exchange.
The Mazzoleni family’s story is deeply entwined with Albisola. Giovanni and Anna Pia first visited in the late 1960s, drawn by its cultural vitality and its famous Lungomare degli Artisti, a kilometre of mosaics created by leading Italian and international artists. Their visits became more frequent in the early 1970s, when they developed a close friendship with Wifredo Lam, who had been working in Albisola since the 1950s. Lam’s hillside studio, filled with African objects, left a vivid impression on their young son Luigi. These encounters shaped the family’s early passion for collecting and led to Lam’s 1978 solo exhibition at Galleria Gissi in Turin, organised in collaboration with the Mazzolenis before they later took over the gallery space as Nuova Gissi.
Albisola: A Season of Artists brings together seminal works by Baj, Capogrossi, Crippa, Fontana, Jorn, Lam, Manzoni and Scanavino, highlighting the intercultural dialogue that defined this extraordinary period. From Lam’s Femme Cheval(1966), with its mythological Afro-Cuban imagery, to Fontana’s ceramic Concetti spaziali, and Baj’s satirical collages, the exhibition revisits a moment when Albisola became a stage for some of the most advanced international research in the plastic and visual arts.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a critical essay by Luca Bochicchio, art historian, curator, and professor at the University of Verona, as well as founder of MuDA – Museo Diffuso Albisola, which includes the Jorn House Museum. Bochicchio has spent over a decade researching the artistic legacy of the region and describes the exhibition as “a new chapter in the ongoing story of Albisola’s impact on contemporary art,” highlighting the Mazzoleni family as a key example of second-generation collectors and dealers whose paths crossed with Albisola in the 1960s and 1970s.
