MASSIMILIANO PELLETTI

Challenging tradition, redefining myth in Metamorfosi exhibition.

Opening from 8 October to 9 November 2025, and timed with Frieze Week, Metamorfosi by Massimiliano Pelletti challenges how sculpture is defined. Held at Bowman Sculpture gallery, this exhibition signals a fresh direction for the space. Under Mica Bowman’s leadership, the gallery links historic figures like Rodin with bold contemporary artists like Pelletti, who push the boundaries of tradition.

For centuries, sculpture idealised classical beauty: polished, symmetrical and still. Pelletti however, takes a different approach. Drawing from Greco-Roman heritage, African mythology and the raw textures of natural materials, he deconstructs the familiar.

Instead of chasing perfection, Metamorfosi builds something new. Pelletti reshapes ancient symbols into fluid, expressive forms that feel both mythic and contemporary. The result is not a revival but a shift forward, a fresh vision of what sculpture can be.

PELLETTI’S BOLD TAKE ON THE CLASSICAL IDEAL

For centuries, Western sculpture prized symmetry and smoothness. Since the 1960s, artists have challenged these ideals, revealing something more vulnerable and authentic.

Pelletti continues this disruption. Raised in Pietrasanta, Italy, surrounded by fragments and relics, he began restoring the past. Now, he reshapes history with sculptures rooted in the past yet strikingly futuristic, balancing tradition with reinvention.

FROM PIETRASANTA TO PALAZZO MASSIMO

Pelletti’s rise began at the Biennale of Young Artists in 2006, followed by Venice. His major breakthrough came when he became the first living artist shown alongside Canova at Rome’s Museo Nazionale Romano.

Now based in Pietrasanta, Pelletti fuses mythology, anatomy, and cultural symbolism, creating a vision that spans continents and centuries. “My work doesn’t remember myth,” he says. “It transforms it.”

METAMORFOSI: WHEN GODS GO FLUID

This is Pelletti’s second UK solo show with Bowman Sculpture, following his sold-out 2023 debut. Metamorfosi also launches the gallery’s expanded Mayfair space.

Moreover, the exhibition’s timing, coinciding with Frieze Week, is no accident. It sparks a dialogue between past and present, between flawless form and deliberate fracture. It blurs the line between where art finishes and history starts.

Massimiliano Pelletti, African Ares, Ivory Onyx

AFRICAN ARES: A GOD REBORN

Carved from richly veined pink onyx, African Ares fuses Roman war deities with African mask traditions. The result is neither past nor present. It’s both. Ares is no longer the god of empire. Instead, he becomes a layered, hybrid totem, shaped by clash, memory, and transformation.

MYTH IN MOTION

In Metamorfosi, Pelletti goes beyond traditional sculpture, capturing shapes caught in motion. These works aren’t fixed statues but fragments of visions mid-shift. Faces blur, bodies dissolve, and time seems to bend around them. “They echo ideas,” he says, “rising from intuition, not nostalgia.” Instead of focusing on the past, these sculptures reveal what’s taking shape now. Rather than mourning myth, Metamorfosi reinvents it. His gods feel fragile and mysterious, shedding any trace of perfection or permanence.

VISCERE: WHERE BEAUTY BLEEDS

Viscere offers a different kind of rupture. At first glance, the sculpture shows a female torso in luminous stone. However, up close, veins and fissures emerge. Flesh becomes crystal. The body opens, raw and exposed. What was classical becomes anatomically vulnerable, strong, and entirely modern.

Massimiliano Pelletti Viscere, Brazilian Calcite

VISCERE AND MATERIALS THAT SPEAK

In Viscere, rupture becomes revelation. From a distance, the sculpture appears as a glowing female torso carved in polished stone, but up close, cracks and veins emerge, with flesh seeming to shift into crystal. What begins as a classical form transforms into something raw, open, and powerfully human. Pelletti embraces the stone’s imperfections: fossil-marked marble, fractured onyx, and translucent minerals. Treating each material as a living partner rather than something to control.

GLOBAL REGOGNITION

Since 2023, Pelletti has exhibited internationally, from Art SG in Singapore to TEFAF Maastricht. In June 2025, his monumental work led the Treasure House Fair in London. In January 2026, he will debut in New York at The Winter Show.