Andy Warhol. Ladies and gentlemen

Fifty years on, Ferrara reclaims its place at the heart of contemporary art. This year marks the anniversary of the landmark exhibition Ladies and Gentlemen of 1975-76, which brought one of the most charismatic figures of the twentieth century - Andy Warhol - to Palazzo dei Diamanti.

To celebrate this historic event, the city plays host to the masterworks of the father of Pop Art. More than a simple restaging of that legendary exhibition, this is an opportunity to discover a selection of his most celebrated portraits and self-portraits. The Ladies and Gentlemen series helped redefine portraiture for the contemporary age. After exploring the myths of the entertainment world and immortalising iconic figures, Warhol presented the world premiere of a cycle dedicated to anonymous Black and Latina drag queens. Turning for the first time to marginalised subjects, he focused his attention on the individual, their identity and their representation

The exhibition Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen, conceived and organised by the Fondazione Ferrara Arte and by the Gallerie d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara, and supported by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, presents an exceptional selection of over 150 portraits - acrylics, drawings, silkscreen prints and Polaroids - from major museums and collections, offering an immersive restaging of the 1975-76 exhibition alongside a journey through Warhol's world of portraiture.

The ambition is twofold: to rediscover the iconic power of those compelling images and, at the same time, to reveal the surprising relevance of Warhol's work - which anticipated the era of global communication and brought into focus issues that remain wide open today, such as aesthetic manipulation, gender identity, multiculturalism, artificiality and media overexposure.