Ineffabile Lea. Lea Colliva (1901-1975). A cinquant'anni dalla morte

Museo Ottocento Bologna presents a major exhibition dedicated to Lea Colliva, marking fifty years since the artist’s passing.

Curated by Beatrice Buscaroli and Francesca Sinigaglia, this comprehensive exhibition features over eighty works — many previously unseen — mostly from the Fondazione Bertocchi Colliva in Monzuno. Together, they retrace the artist’s creative journey and restore the prominence of one of Bologna’s most original artistic figures.

A free and restless spirit, Colliva transformed her vital energy into an intense and vibrant painting style, one that harmonized strength and introspection. The exhibition opens with her early naturalistic landscapes of the Bolognese hills and moves through to the 1950s and 1960s, when her art evolved toward an increasingly free and cosmic vision, culminating in full material abstraction.

New research by Francesca Sinigaglia reveals previously unknown formative connections with Flavio Bertelli and the “Orto” group, shedding new light on the path of a painter who took part in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, taught at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts, and was awarded the title of Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica.

The exhibition will be open from October 31, 2025, to March 16, 2026, accompanied by a bilingual monographic catalogue featuring studies and archival materials that bring to life the complex and unclassifiable figure of an artist who will remain forever undefinable, free, and above all… “ineffable.”