For the 2026 autumn art season, CUBO, the corporate museum of the Unipol Group, will be presenting two separate exhibitions at its Bologna locations: Porta Europa and the Via Larga Tower.
The first exhibition (at CUBO in Porta Europa) will be featuring Giuseppe Spagnulo, a key figure in Italian sculpture during the latter half of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, he created two monumental sculptures, Turris and Paesaggio for the Unipol headquarters on Via Stalingrado in Bologna. Today, these works are part of the Unipol Group’s artistic heritage and are currently undergoing conservation maintenance, a process of care and enhancement that will bring renewed attention to these features of the urban landscape.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the passing of Giuseppe Spagnulo (2016–2026), CUBO will be presenting a monographic exhibition curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Roberto Borghi, spread across multiple locations, taking these two specific works as a starting point to reveal their enduring power. The exhibition will trace the artistic inquiry of a sculptor who was able to transform the manual expertise he acquired as a child into formative thought: an approach to sculpture that encompasses earth and metal, gesture and reflection, matter and space.
Giuseppe Spagnulo
Oltre la materia, verso il pensiero formante (Beyond matter, toward formative thought)
9 Oct 2026- 23 Gen 2027
CUBO in Porta Europa
Piazza Vieira de Mello 3
40128 Bologna
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The second exhibition at CUBO, curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Francesca Guerisoli, will be featuring Alberto Gianfreda. It will bring together three sculptural groups of the artist, one site-specific work and two others from his recent body of work.
In his practice, Alberto Gianfreda repurposes everyday ceramic household objects—plates, cups, vases—by shattering them and reassembling the fragments onto flexible metal mesh, creating open structures that allow for constantly new reconfigurations. Once shattered and reassembled, the objects lose their original integrity. The individual fragments retain a trace of the whole, yet they only acquire meaning in relation to one another. In this way, the fracture becomes the origin of new forms and new possibilities for existence.
Throughout this process, the public can interact with the sculpture, moving its fragments and altering its shape. As a consequence, the sculpture is never definitive, whereas it becomes a space for encounter, its configuration emerging from the interplay between material, sculpture, space, and the public. The artwork becomes a collective asset, its material acting as a connective tissue capable of fostering relationships and generating community.
Through the medium of ceramics with its inherent capacity for adaptation and continuous transformation, the artist invites us to reflect on the contemporary human condition: to acknowledge that we are not whole, but rather imperfect; to recognise our own fragile, imperfect, and ever-changing nature in an object that has been shattered and subsequently reassembled.
The exhibition invites us to see our vital human condition reflected in imperfection, in change, and in the encounter with the other.
Alberto Gianfreda
Ancora una volta, una volta ancora (Yet again)
6 Nov 2026 - 15 May 2027
Bologna- CUBO at Torre Unipol
Via Larga 8
40138 Bologna
