Within the confines of the Galleria Civica in Trento, the Mart is hosting the most extensive solo exhibition of Francesco De Grandi in a public museum.

Focusing on the artist's last ten years of work, the exhibition features around seventy pieces, from his celebrated monumental creations to his distinctive, less familiar, and at times unpublished graphic works.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a chapter of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra and recalls the moral and spiritual values associated with the concept of sacrifice. Honey represents the allure of immediate pleasure, which the philosopher forsakes in pursuit of a more authentic and aware existence.

With clear references to the archetypes of art history and sacred iconography, De Grandi understands artistic practice as a way of spiritual elevation, an almost meditative exercise shared with spectators and viewers of the work, as in a 'sacred ritual'. De Grandi's work is a figurative painting that bridges tradition and modernity, evoking a world of fantasy and celebrating nature through vivid, luminous hues.

Emblematic from this standpoint is the central artwork of the exhibition: the large Medea in the Garden of Colchis (2023). It presents Medea as a child, a sorceress of burgeoning power, with a look of bewilderment and a small snake coiled around her wrist, representing the duality of good and evil, life and death.

Additional large-scale works in this collection are religiously inspired, such as the Triptych of the stories of Jesus (2015-2017), Porziuncola (2019) and Sant'Onofrio, a newly crafted piece for the exhibition. These works further the artist's examination of hermit saints, emblematic of those existing on the periphery.

The exhibition also features 28 plates from the Atlas of Imaginary Anatomy, reworkings of figures from an old anatomy volume.

During the days of the exhibition, De Grandi created a site-specific intervention on one of the walls of the gallery: Disegno sogni (Dream drawing). This piece explores the notion of drawing as an unrestricted and direct form of thought expression, inscribed with the left hand and complemented by the image of a spatula fish, a deep-sea entity reminiscent of numerous alchemical symbols like the uroboros.

The exhibition project will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring essays from art historians Valentina Bruschi and Antonio Grulli and curator Gabriele Lorenzoni.