Portraits of the 20th century. The collections of the Bottari Lattes Foundation and beyond: starting from March 29th, 2026, the exhibition halls of the Bottari Lattes Foundation in Monforte d'Alba will be populated by real and imaginary faces, with over fifty works including those signed by Mario Lattes and others belonging to his collections, in dialogue with some of the most important masters of the '900s. The exhibition is curated by Francesco Poli.

In his vast and articulated artistic activity, characterized by refined literary suggestions, as well as by disturbing fantastic and surreal visions, Mario Lattes has always cultivated a great interest in portraiture never intended in a banally conventional sense. His portraits are drawn and painted with incisive attention to individual identity, with connotations ranging from the most intimate, as in the case of family members, to those strongly expressionistic and visionary.

The exhibition also pays particular attention to his numerous self-portraits, through which the artist seems to delve deeply into his own problematic existential psychological dimension. Alongside a selection of Lattes' works, a selection of portraits from the Bottari Lattes Foundation collection is proposed.

The other section of the exhibition will be dedicated to a series of portraits and self-portraits of painters and sculptors with whom Lattes had relationships and engaged in the artistic context of his generation. The selection includes works by painters such as Mario Reviglione, Felice Casorati, Jessie Boswell, Carlo Levi, Francesco Menzio, Daphne Maugham, Nella Marchesini, Italo Cremona, Luigi Spazzapan, Mario Calandri, Carol Rama; and sculptors such as Giacomo Manzù, Umberto Mastroianni, Sandro Cherchi, and Mario Giansone.