Ian Davenport in Todi: a dialogue between painting and sculpture in Todi's Hall of Stones

From Aug. 31 to Oct. 5, 2025, Todi, in the province of Perugia, will host an exhibition curated by the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation and the City of Todi, in collaboration with the Todi Festival. The Sala delle Pietre in the Palazzo del Popolo will welcome Ian Davenport (Sidcup, 1966), an internationally renowned British artist known for his innovative approach to painting and sculpture. The exhibition, titled Holding Center, offers an overview of his painting-installations, which blur the boundaries between two-dimensionality and sculpture. Davenport, a leading exponent of the Young British Artists movement, returns to Italy after the success of his 2022 exhibition at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome. His Painting with floors, installations that play with the floor as a pictorial surface, will be accompanied by a series of works on paper, titled Splats, featuring splashes of color that challenge the traditional view of painting as a static, two-dimensional form. A striking element in the exhibition will be Davenport’s video installation, which will be on view from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7, 2025 at the Palazzo del Capitano, one of the venues of the Todi Festival, which transforms the city into a stage for art and culture every year. This installation, which will be visible during the days of the event, will further enrich the visual experience proposed by the artist.

Davenport’s initiative in Todi is part of a long tradition of collaboration between the Beverly Pepper Foundation, the City of Todi and the Todi Festival, which have always promoted contemporary art as an integral part of the city’s cultural life. In past years, the city has had the privilege of hosting great masters such as Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fabrizio Plessi and Mark di Suvero, confirming its central role in the international art scene. This year, with the return of Silvano Spada as artistic director of the Todi Festival, the event opens to a special edition. Davenport to also sign the 39th edition’s poster, bringing to life a program that combines the central events with a rich calendar of free collateral initiatives. These will include guided tours for the public, workshops for children and educational projects for schools, thus creating a bridge between contemporary art and the local community. Davenport, with his research that embraces matter and color, invites the public to a sensory experience that goes beyond mere observation. His work thus challenges the limits imposed by artistic conventions and opens up new possibilities for understanding the relationship between form, space and color. The artist is known for his ability to combine traditional and modern techniques, creating works that challenge expectations and stimulate critical thinking.

“I am delighted,” says Ian Davenport, “to have been invited by the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation and the city of Todi to exhibit my work. For me, Italy has always been the home of artistic brilliance, and the Italian Renaissance painters have had a huge influence on my work. The inspiration for the colors in my works often comes from artists such as Beato Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco and Sandro Botticelli. My paintings explore the physical materiality of painting, sometimes going beyond two-dimensionality, thus taking on a sculptural form that restores a dynamic intervention in the exhibition space.”

“Ian Davenport,” says Antonino Ruggiano, Mayor of Todi, “gives the Todi Festival 2025 a poster full of lights and colors, iconically anticipating the figure of a special edition with which the city rediscovers Silvano Spada artistic director and sees the collaboration with the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation consolidated. The name of another internationally renowned artist is added to the extraordinary gallery of prestigious signatures, major exhibitions and contemporary artworks that have enlivened Todi over the past half century.”

“I thank the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation,” asserts Silvano Spada, Todi Festival Artistic Director, “for its tribute to the Festival with the creation of the Manifesto signed by the English artist Ian Davenport: a gesture that allows me to continue my attention to contemporary art with, among others, the names of Alighiero Boetti, Kounellis, Pistoletto, authors of famous posters of some of my Festivals. But, above all and with tenderness, I am pleased to remember that, back in 1987, Beverly was my very first fan and my social/cultural reference of my private or representative meetings in the sociality of the Todi of that time and, at that time, unknown to me.”

“We are proud,” emphasizes Elisa Veschini, President of the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation,“ to reaffirm our prestigious partnership with the Todi Festival, an alliance that continues to grow with enthusiasm and passion. It is an honor for us to be able to work alongside a Festival that, with the new direction of Silvano Spada, is enriched with new energy and visions. His inspiring guidance stimulates us to continue an enlightened path that, for years, has brought some of the greatest names in contemporary art to Todi, making this city an international point of reference for culture. We thank master Ian Davenport for accepting our invitation, his work will contribute once again, to this extraordinary project that celebrates art in all its forms.”

“Ian Davenport,” recalls Marco Tonelli, curator of the project and scientific curator of the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation,“ is one of the most important British abstract painters active since the late 1980s, internationally recognized, whose works manage to seduce, almost magically, and activate the gaze of both specialists and laymen, thanks to their dynamic colors and the processes of painting always in view, as if the viewer were part of the making of the work and the work something alive and still in progress. An engaging art then, almost participatory, in which the passage of time and the immediacy of experience seem to constitute the substance of the painting, holding appearance and structure in balance.”

Notes on the artist

Ian Davenport, born in Kent in 1966, trained at Goldsmiths College, London, where he graduated in 1988. That same year he participated in the Freeze exhibition, a founding event of the Young British Artists movement. Just two years after graduation he had his first solo exhibition at Waddington Galleries in London, and in 1991 he was nominated for the Turner Prize, making him the youngest artist ever nominated for the prestigious award. Davenport has established himself on the international scene through an abstract language that investigates painterly gesture and the physicality of color. His most recent works are distinguished by lines of acrylic paint poured on sloping surfaces, where color matter pours into space, creating complex textures of color and depth. Over the past decade he has intensified his graphic work, producing a large series of etchings and silkscreens. He has exhibited in numerous major venues, including Dundee Contemporary Arts (1999), Ikon Gallery in Birmingham (2004), Tate Liverpool (2000), and Dallas Contemporary (2018). In 2006 he made Poured Lines Southwark Street, a monumental 48-meter-long mural painting on a London bridge, now among the largest permanent public works in the United Kingdom.

At the 2017 Venice Biennale he presented, commissioned by Swatch, an installation consisting of more than a thousand vertical stripes, accompanied by a limited-edition artist’s watch. Her collaborations also include Meissen, for whom she hand-painted a series of porcelain plates (2016), and Dior, with whom she designed a handbag for the Lady Art project. In 2010 she participated in a residency program at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. His works are part of important public and private collections, including those of the Tate in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum Wales in Cardiff, the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, MoMA in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in La Spezia, and the Dallas Museum of Art. His first monograph, published by Thames & Hudson, came out in 2014. In Italy he is represented by Luca Tommasi Gallery in Milan.

Ian Davenport in Todi: a dialogue between painting and sculpture in Todi's Hall of Stones

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.