Casa Arcangeli Comes Back to Life Through Giuseppe De Mattia’s Photographs at Palazzo Bentivoglio
From 13 to 15 November 2026, bEB, the library of Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna, presents Casa Arcangeli, a photographic project by Giuseppe De Mattia that, through twelve images, reveals traces of the domestic and intellectual life of one of the most significant families in Bologna’s twentieth-century cultural history.
The memory of places, the traces left behind by objects, and the subtle boundary between presence and absence lie at the heart of Casa Arcangeli, a photographic project by Giuseppe De Mattia, on view at bEB, the library of Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna, from 13 to 15 November 2026.
The exhibition features twelve photographs from the series Strada Maggiore 49 (Casa Arcangeli), recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Bolognese institution. The images document the rooms of the Arcangeli family's last residence, transforming the empty spaces of an apartment into a visual narrative of individual and collective memory.
Created in 2013, the project was developed shortly before the renovation of the apartment at Strada Maggiore 49, after its furnishings had already been removed. These rooms had once been home to art historian Francesco Arcangeli, a leading figure in twentieth-century Italian art criticism, together with his siblings Nino, a musician; Gaetano, a poet; and Bianca, known as Rosalba, a painter.
Through De Mattia's lens, the bare walls become surfaces on which the imprints of what is no longer there can still be read. The traces left by furniture, books, and paintings form a kind of unintentional archive, a silent map evoking the family's everyday life and intellectual history.
Photography thus becomes a means of observation and preservation, capable of bringing to light what time and the transformation of spaces threaten to erase. Rather than simply documenting a place, De Mattia explores its emotional and cultural dimensions, transforming absence into a form of testimony.
Giuseppe De Mattia at Casa Arcangeli: Photography, Archives and Contemporary Artistic Research
Born in Bari in 1980 and currently working between Bologna and Noha, near Lecce, Giuseppe De Mattia is a visual artist whose practice spans photography, video, sound, drawing, painting and installation.
His work explores the relationships between individual and collective memory, archives and contemporary experience, through an artistic practice that combines critical observation, experimentation and a particular attention to everyday objects and images.
Having participated in the Premio Combat, De Mattia pursues an artistic practice that moves across different media, exploring the narrative and conceptual possibilities of contemporary imagery.
Alongside his artistic practice, he collaborates with Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia and the Cineteca di Bologna. In 2015, he founded L.T. – Libri Tasso, an independent publishing project dedicated to self-published artists' books. In 2020, he established Marktstudio, a space dedicated to artistic experimentation within a framing workshop in Bologna.
His activities also include collaborations with the collectives Coclite/De Mattia and Casa a Mare, the latter founded together with Luca Coclite and Claudio Musso.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Saturday 14 November at 5:30 pm, the bEB Library will host a conversation between Giuseppe De Mattia, Elena Volpato, curator at GAM – Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, and Tommaso Pasquali, curator at Palazzo Bentivoglio.
The discussion will offer an opportunity to explore the Casa Arcangeli project and reflect on the relationship between photography, memory and the traces of everyday life, themes that play a central role in the artist's practice.
The photographic series has also been published in a limited edition by Danilo Montanari Editore.
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