Ivan Theimer – Terrecotte
Milan, 4 November 2026 – 22 January 2027 |
Terrecotte
Ivan Theimer
Milan
Corso Venezia 29, 20121 Milan, MI
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
MARCOROSSI artecontemporanea presents Terrecotte, a solo exhibition by Ivan Theimer that brings together unique terracotta sculptures, differing in expression, modeling, and decorative apparatus.
A primordial material of sculpture, terracotta represents for Theimer—a Czech-born naturalized French artist—an intimate field of research deeply tied to memory. In the works presented in the exhibition, this search is renewed through a series of heads that evoke Etruscan and Roman portraiture, reinterpreted through a personal language suspended between history, myth, and imagination.
The faces, distinct in expression and character, are surmounted by elaborate headpieces that incorporate a recurring symbolic repertoire in Theimer’s work. Overlapping turtles, olive crowns, vine branches and bunches of grapes, fish, dolphins, and tiny faces compose layered narratives in which references to classical mythology, biblical tradition, and the natural world coexist in balance.
Alongside the heads, the exhibition presents larger works that expand the artist’s symbolic vocabulary. Among these are a shield featuring the head of Medusa, in which the figure of the Gorgon transforms from a threatening presence into a decorative element, and two steles conceived as small votive altars, whose surfaces are populated with faces, cypress trees, shrubs, and animals—turtles, snakes, porcupines, and dolphins.
With Terrecotte, Theimer restores a narrative and symbolic dimension to the material, where tradition is not mere quotation, but a living organism. The forms hold ancient memories and transform them into contemporary images, bringing together fragility and permanence, formal rigor and imaginative freedom.
On the occasion of the exhibition, a catalog accompanied by a critical essay by Massimo Bertozzi will be published.
Ivan Theimer (Olomouc, Moravia, 1944) is one of the leading contemporary European sculptors. Following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he left his home country and settled in Paris, where he resumed his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts. During the 1970s, he participated in numerous exhibitions in France, distinguishing himself in the capital’s vibrant art scene. In 1978 and 1982, he represented France at the Venice Biennale, returning in 1995 for its centenary celebrations with an exhibition at Palazzo Grassi.
In 1996, Václav Havel dedicated an anthological exhibition to him at the Belvedere of Prague Castle. In subsequent years, his work was showcased in major European museum and institutional venues. Key exhibitions include Selva simbolica at the Accorsi-Ometto Museum of Decorative Arts in Turin (2021); Il sogno di Theimer at the Medici Fortress and the Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art in Arezzo (2016); Il sentimento del tempo at the Italian Center for Contemporary Art in Foligno (2015); Via lucis at the Olomouc Museum of Art and the Archdiocese Palace (2014); and La foresta di obelischi (2008), an exhibition project hosted across the Boboli Gardens, the Gallery of Modern Art at Palazzo Pitti, and the Uffizi Colonnade in Florence.
In parallel, Theimer has completed major public commissions, including the monument in Place de la Victoire in Bordeaux (2005), the Arion Fountain in Olomouc (2002), the monument to Comenius in Uherský Brod (1992), the Monument to the Rights of Man in Champ-de-Mars, Paris (1989) commemorating the bicentennial of the 1789 Declaration, and the obelisks for the Élysée Palace (1984–1987).
Theimer lives and works between Paris and Pietrasanta.