Galleria Russo Archivi presents Arcani, a solo exhibition by Giancarla Frare, curated by Daniela Fonti, opening on January 22, 2026.
Following the major retrospective dedicated to her in 2024 by the Capitoline Superintendence at the Casino dei Principi in Villa Torlonia, Giancarla Frare—one of the most authoritative voices in contemporary multidisciplinary artistic research—presents a cycle of works devoted to the twenty-two Major Arcana of the Tarot, created over recent years.
Regarding this body of work, the artist states:
“The Arcana of the Tarot—the 22 Major Arcana—are sacred images, meditative cards that, beyond a divinatory use, which I do not practice, serve the truly important function of writing, through images, a summa of universal archetypes. It felt natural for me to bring together all the elements of drawing, photography, writing, and painting that have appeared throughout my research and allow them to become ‘my’ Tarot.”
The works on view, which elegantly combine painting, drawing, and photographic insertions to create pieces of great visual resonance, take shape as a true visual summa: a complex and layered abecedary in which each image becomes a site of convergence for memory, imagination, and introspection. As curator Daniela Fonti emphasizes, “the invention—made as personal as possible—of her own Major Arcana proceeds from the trigger that the Characters generate within the artist’s iconographic heritage, sedimented in the unconscious; a heritage that is activated through a complex chain of analogies which, as in the mysterious ‘game’ of tarot cards, combine mnemonic deposits, literary memories, introspective digressions, and dreamlike fantasies in unpredictable ways.”
The theme of the Tarot, at the center of renewed critical and curatorial interest internationally—from recent exhibitions at the Warburg Institute in London to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, in collaboration with The Morgan Library in New York—finds in Arcani an original interpretation, one that is deeply coherent with Giancarla Frare’s artistic trajectory.
Alongside the original works, the exhibition also presents the Arcani Edition, produced by Modiano in 2025: a limited edition of 100 copies, numbered and signed by the artist.
