At the Baths of Diocletian a large solo exhibition of Tony Cragg's sculptures made in the last twenty years

From November 9, 2024, to May 4, 2025, the National Roman Museum hosts at the Baths of Diocletian the exhibition Tony Cragg. Infinite and Beautiful Forms, curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stéphane Verger: a major solo exhibition dedicated to Tony Cragg (Liverpool, 1949), a British artist among the leading exponents of contemporary sculpture, who has been experimenting with innovative forms, materials and original techniques since the 1970s. Organized by BAM - Eventi d’Arte, the exhibition expands from the museum rooms to the squares of Rome thanks to the collaboration with the Municipio I Roma Centro.

Eighteen sculptures created over the past two decades in bronze, wood, travertine, fiberglass and steel are on display in the historic environment of the Baths of Diocletian. Works with seductive and mysterious forms, recalling mineral elements, plants and geological and biological structures, and evoking sea waves, the geometric structures of plants or a shell, are now in direct dialogue with the archaeological spaces of the monumental complex.

Cragg has always explored the infinite potential of drawing and sculpture, confronting nature, its creative processes and evolutionary structures. The title, Infinite and Beautiful Forms, echoes a famous phrase by Charles Darwin and reveals the artist’s enthusiasm for the variety of forms of life, from the microscopic to the cosmic, as well as the inexhaustible curiosity that drives toward knowledge of reality by observing natural patterns and structures. For Cragg, this richness of nature is reflected in the work of the sculptor, free to experiment without limits with materials and media. His research reflects a dynamic exchange between the natural and the artificial, between biomorphic and virtual patterns, arising from theobservation of organic compositions and crystal structures of minerals, but also including digitally processed and laboratory-produced forms, integrating disciplines such as archaeology, geology, art history and biology. In his creative process, Cragg creates and deforms forms to create sculptures that oscillate between abstraction and figuration and can evoke natural landscapes or human figures and everyday objects. The works are thought of as complex and dynamic structures that challenge structural and physical limits, balancing emptiness and fullness, stability and instability. His sculptures, generated by a central root from which numerous ramifications develop, reflect nature, differentiating themselves from the functionalism of industry and augmented reality. Sculpture for Cragg is a method of exploration and knowledge, a dialogue between perception and imagination, between the physical and imaginary worlds, with a pedagogical value, an exercise in knowledge and thought that develops through creative and intuitive processes.

At the Baths of Diocletian, visitors are invited to an experience that stimulates the senses, imagination, thought and vision, touching levels of reality often invisible to the naked eye. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog published by Skira.

“Tony Cragg’s exhibition at the Baths of Diocletian promises to be among the most interesting of the upcoming Roman cultural season,” says Stéphane Verger, “organized in collaboration with Roma Capitale. Cragg gives us works charged with a strength that time will not disperse, like the collections of the Museum that hosts them; his sculptures stand out in the Great Halls and confirm the prestigious vocation of the Baths of Diocletian to host the protagonists of contemporary sculpture.”

“For the third time in my career I have had the honor of being able to collaborate with Tony Cragg,” says Sergio Risaliti. “And for the third time his works were confronted with spaces strongly connoted by the history and art of our past. Cragg has a special sensibility and a solid knowledge of art history, and because of this he is able to get in tune with the environments that welcome his sculptures, managing to make his forms resonate in the new contexts without causing discomfort and cacophony. This is a sign that his inspiration comes from afar, though it is definitely rooted in the present with twists of time that link the most distant past to the most distant future. Encountering his magnificent sculptural inventions we are as if drawn into a space-time dimension that twists and turns without beginning or end, connecting the origin and geometries of natural structures with the infinite potential of human creativity. I have always admired this generosity and intensity of his, which constantly unfolds and renews itself in the search for ever-new and puzzling forms, together with techniques and materials that he studies and experiments with the curiosity and wisdom of a scientist - alchemist.”

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Photo: Monkeys Video Lab

At the Baths of Diocletian a large solo exhibition of Tony Cragg's sculptures made in the last twenty years

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