Origine is the title of the work by Madalena Negrone, oil on canvas, 160 x 180 cm, which has joined the permanent collections of the GNAMC. On the occasion of the presentation and donation ceremony, the Museum displayed seven works that summarise the artist's research over the last ten years between Genoa and New York.
Presentation ceremony
Wednesday 16 September 2026
6:00 pm: Press Conference, Sala delle Colonne
7:00 pm: Exhibition opening, Room 9
On Wednesday 16 September 2026, at 6:00 pm, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea presented Origine (2025) by Madalena Negrone, oil on canvas, 160 x 180 cm, which entered the Museum's permanent collection through a donation to the GNAMC. Origine was shown alongside six other works that convey some of the central strands of the artist's research over the last ten years.
The ceremony featured Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Director General of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, and Guicciardo Sassoli de' Bianchi, who presented the artist's work.
The artist and the work
Madalena Negrone (1982) is an Italian artist. Her research arises from the encounter between art, science, movement and metaphysics. Born in Genoa, a Mediterranean city shaped by the meeting of different cultures, architectures and paths, the artist brings to her painting a sensibility deeply tied to the idea of relationship. The painterly gesture retains a central function: curved lines, circular movements and accumulations of matter record the physical action of painting and, at the same time, evoke forces that are not directly visible. The canvas holds the memory of the movement that generated it, in a tension between matter and the immaterial, order and transformation. Her musical training also contributes to the rhythmic construction of the compositions: repetition, pause, variation and counterpoint translate into relationships between forms, intensities and intervals.
In Origine, a dense web of turquoise and blue marks runs across the canvas like an organism in constant transformation. Threads, knots and vortices intertwine, while at the centre a generative force seems to emerge: something takes shape, expands and at the same time dissolves. Origin is thus represented not as a defined moment, but as a continuous process of birth, relationship and transformation.
Alongside Origine, the exhibition presented Blue 5172, a large canvas five metres wide, 44F Red and Black and the four works Egg – Blue, Green, Red, Yellow. With its immersive scale, Blue 5172 introduces visitors to Negrone's mental and aesthetic space and to the system of forms, movements and relationships that runs through her painting. A central part of her research develops around the Entangled series, born of an interest, reinterpreted in artistic terms, in entanglement, a phenomenon of quantum mechanics in which two or more particles show deep correlations even when separated in space. The artist takes up this concept not as a subject to illustrate, but as a poetic principle of interconnection.
Human Made
For several years, well before images generated by artificial intelligence entered everyday debate about art, Madalena Negrone has placed on the back of her works the statement "Human Made – No Robots or AI involved".
The formula, coined by the artist and referenced in a speech given at the United Nations during the high-level dialogue "Connecting Cultures in the Digital Era" on 21 May 2025, takes on a precise meaning today. The complexity of the images, the proliferation of marks and the forms that seem to develop autonomously in space may, at first glance, evoke images produced through digital or generative processes. On the contrary, every element arises from an entirely manual process: gesture, time, layering of matter, choice and the unpredictability of the act of painting.
Human Made is therefore not simply a statement against technology, but an affirmation of the human origin of the work. At a time when the production of images can become instantaneous and immaterial, Negrone asserts the physicality and the time of painting. The title Origine thus seems to concern not only the generative force of the composition, but also the very origin of the image, traced back to the physical presence of the artist.
Biographical note
Among Madalena Negrone's exhibitions are the solo show at the Museo Arte e Scienza in Milan (2023); Forma 1 Più UNO at the Galleria Guidi in Genoa (2024); Destiny vs. Will at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in New York (2024); Madalena Negrone meets Bruno Munari (2025); Luce, at Villa Arconati (2026) and Quantum Coherence in Paris, organised by the Tourné Gallery of New York.
Technical data
Title
Origine. The donation Madalena Negrone
Exhibition venue
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art
Viale delle Belle Arti 131, Rome
Dates: 16 September – 11 October 2026
Organised by
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Director General
Renata Cristina Mazzantini
Curated by
Guicciardo Sassoli de' Bianchi
Project
Associazione Nuova Artemarea ETS
Research and archive
Tourné Gallery
Coordination for the artist's studio
Javier Tourné
Matilda Cribiori
Graphic design
Bianca Garagnani
Technical project and exhibition set-up
Artiser S.r.l.
Catalogue
Metilene Edizioni