Ferrara is preparing to host an international event in spring 2026. It marks the 50th anniversary of the "Ladies and Gentlemen exhibition" of 1975-76, which brought one of the most charismatic figures of the 20th century to Palazzo dei Diamanti: Andy Warhol.
Ferrara is celebrating the event by welcoming the masterpieces of the father of pop art to the same venue. It will not only be an exhibition on Warhol, but a re-edition of the transgressive exhibition that Warhol himself presented in Italy and which marked a turning point in his production and in the art of the time. With Ladies and Gentlemen, the artist had, for the first time, chosen anonymous African-American and Puerto Rican drag queens as the protagonists of his work, rather than icons of show business such as Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, on whom he had focused until then, shifting his attention to the individual and their identity. A new energy emerges from these vivid and exuberant portraits, giving life to a colourful gallery of glam-queer effigies that seem to herald the aesthetic trends of the third millennium.
The exhibition Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen boasts the prestigious support of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Palazzo dei Diamanti once again welcomes some of the great artist's most provocative creations, in an immersive re-enactment of the 1975-76 exhibition, accompanied by an exciting journey into the world of Warholian portraiture. The exhibition offers an exceptional selection of over 150 portraits, including acrylics, drawings, silkscreen prints and Polaroids, from important European and American museums and collections.
