The project
A nineteenth-century format, a southern city, the painting of new generations. How Salon Palermo began, what it has been, where it is going.
A Salon, today
In nineteenth-century Paris the Salons were the great periodic exhibitions where artists presented their work to the public, the critics and the collectors. An academic format, often unfair to the new.
In 2019 the gallery hosts the exhibition of Luigi Presicce’s Simposio di Pittura: a first plunge into young painting on via Maletto. In 2021 Giovanni Rizzuto’s idea, shared with Eva Oliveri, is to revive the Salon format without nostalgia. With Antonio Grulli’s text the question becomes a manifesto: give up spurious themes and curatorial theses to bring the work back to the centre, letting each painting live “of its own independence and solitude, as a universe of its own”.
It is a bet on painting, at a moment when everything is possible again: the abstract has the same strength as the figurative, the visionary dream sounds as alive as geometric research.
“In a Salon each work lives of its own independence and solitude, as a universe of its own, autonomous and complete.”
The migration south
Every early July painting travels down to Palermo. Grulli calls it “a cyclical migration, which has already happened in the past, of painting towards the sun, life, colours, heat”: far from the hermeneutics and conceptualism of the north, to embrace the eroticism of vision, magic and mystery.
The gallery is on via Maletto, in the Kalsa. Around it, museums, bars, squares paved with grey and red stones, Antonello da Messina and Guttuso, nights that never end. Palermo “which in years hostile to painting has been a place of resistance to homogenisation and freedom”: that wedge of Europe pulled towards North Africa and the Middle East.
“Palermo that for us is a thousand talks, endless sweats, encounters; the only school of art and life.”
A survey of new painting
From 2021 to 2024 the Salon brought thirty-seven artists to Palermo, mostly born between the 1980s and the early 2000s, from every Italian geography: Venice and Milan, Florence and Bologna, Urbino, Rome, Apulia, Sardinia, Sicily.
Since 2022 the curatorship has had two voices, Antonio Grulli and the painter Francesco De Grandi: each selection grows out of exhibitions, meetings and studio visits in the preceding months. The common thread is a figuration with a visionary matrix, indebted to surrealism and to European expressionism between the wars. In 2024 painting begins to overflow into three dimensions.
Year after year the Salon has become an observatory: “many new names on everyone’s lips today have passed right through here”.
From the Salon to the gallery
The Salon does not end with the summer. Some of the artists who passed through here have kept working with RizzutoGallery: Mattia Barbieri, in the first edition, is now represented by the gallery.
In 2024 the gallery opened a second space in Düsseldorf, in the Flingern district. In 2025 Mattia Barbieri presented a solo show there, while Anna Capolupo (Salon Palermo 1) and Dorotea Tocco (Salon Palermo 2) showed in the group exhibition “Intimate Territories” (January–February 2025): the bridge between the Italian scene and the European context.
The story
RizzutoGallery opens
Giovanni Rizzuto and Eva Oliveri open the gallery in the Kalsa district of Palermo.
The precedent: the Simposio di Pittura
RizzutoGallery hosts the exhibition of the participants of Luigi Presicce’s Simposio di Pittura. According to Presicce, it was the spark that, in the following years and in the same gallery, led to Salon Palermo.
Salon Palermo
First edition: ten artists and Antonio Grulli’s manifesto text. A nineteenth-century format for new painting.
The Salon at ArtVerona
The first edition goes to the fair: a booth dedicated to the ten artists at ArtVerona 2021, Introduction section, with 41 works.
Salon Palermo 2
Francesco De Grandi joins as curator. Nine artists, an opening until midnight: the “annual migration” becomes a fixture.
Salon Palermo 3
Third edition, eight artists. The Salon is confirmed as an unmissable event of the Palermo summer.
Düsseldorf
The gallery opens a second space in Düsseldorf, in the Flingern district.
From the Salon to Düsseldorf
Mattia Barbieri, Anna Capolupo and Dorotea Tocco show in the German space. The Salon pauses to rethink its format.
Salon Palermo 5
New painting in Italy.
Curatorial aims
Observe
the transformations of contemporary painting in Italy.
Identify
new emerging practices, for quality, coherence and awareness of language.
Legitimise
offer a first platform of critical legitimation and visibility.
Connect
build a bridge between the Italian scene and the international context.
People
Giovanni Rizzuto
Co-founder of RizzutoGallery (Palermo, 2013; Düsseldorf, 2024) with Eva Oliveri. He conceived Salon Palermo and is its artistic director.
Eva Oliveri
Co-founder of RizzutoGallery with Giovanni Rizzuto. She shares the artistic direction of Salon Palermo, ensuring its continuity and critical coherence.
Antonio Grulli
Author of the manifesto text of the first edition (2021) and curator, with Francesco De Grandi, of the 2022, 2023 and 2024 editions.
Francesco De Grandi
Painter and gallery artist. Since 2022 he has co-curated the Salon with Antonio Grulli: each selection grows out of meetings, exhibitions and studio visits in the months before every edition.