From 31 January to 26 April 2026, the Extra Space of the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts welcomes a unique journey: Franco Battiato. Another lifean exhibition-event that celebrates, five years after his death, the human and musical genius of an artist without equal in the history of Italian music.
Among memories and unpublished materials, the visitor travels through Battiato's life in an intense and touching experience, beyond music, beyond time.
Singer-songwriter, musician, poet, philosopher, intellectual: every facet of his talent resonates in the exhibition. From avant-garde to pop, from electronic to mystic, Battiato has transformed Italian song, creating evocative lyrics, perfect harmonies, immortal melodies.
Seven sections tell his life and art: 1. The beginning (from Sicily to Milan), 2. Experience (from acoustics to electronics), 3. Success (from avant-garde to pop), 4. Mystical (between East and West), 5. The man (back to origins), 6. The Master7. From sound to image (Battiato's cinema).
At the center of the room, an octagonal space, an echo of the musical octave, the beating heart of the exhibition, where a listening system envelops the visitor in an immersive sound experience.
Between album covers, historical posters, photographs and rare memorabilia, the exhibition highlights Battiato's versatility: innovator, experimenter, precursor of styles.
Alongside the musical universe, the original pictorial side comes to life, with golden backgrounds and visions full of symbols and archetypes, which evoke a precise Middle Eastern allegorical taste, always loved by the Sicilian Maestro.
In the last two decades of his production, the cinematographic dimension emerges: narrative feature films and documentaries that tell of his artistic and spiritual research, organic to his musical matrix and in dialogue with contemporaneity.
The exhibition, which will be accompanied by in-depth moments and a dedicated catalogue, pays homage to the life that transcends death, to the delicate and luminous soul of one of the greatest contemporary Italian geniuses, inviting the public to rediscover and re-embrace, through his works, that permanent center of gravity that, ultimately, we are all looking for.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
