This video takes you to the opening of Valerio Adami’s exhibition in the new spaces of David Nolan Gallery in New York. David Nolan Gallery presents Alice in the Land of Violence, an exhibition of Valerio Adami’s drawings and paintings from 1962–1966, made before his later hard-edged graphic style. The works mix fantasy and reality while engaging postwar fashion, cars, and commercial culture. The title is taken from one of the pieces on view.
Born in Bologna in 1935 to musician parents, Adami moved to Paris in 1955 and formed close ties with Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam, and writers including Octavio Paz, Italo Calvino, and Jacques Derrida. A 1962 London trip brought contact with Francis Bacon, Richard Hamilton, and others. He later worked at Villa Cantoni on Lake Maggiore, a gathering place for artists and intellectuals.
His 1960s paintings use flat fields of color bound by black outlines, evoking cloisonnism and sometimes compared to Pop Art—a label he rejected in favor of Narrative Figuration grounded in literature and psychoanalysis. Recurring themes include hotel rooms as spaces of isolation and automobiles as emblems of freedom and fragmented identity. Drawing remained central: “Line is a manifestation of thought.” Adami, previously shown at the Venice Biennale and Documenta III, returns to New York after nearly 25 years.
Valerio Adami: Alice in the Land of Violence / David Nolan Gallery, New York. September 9, 2026.
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