VISIONI
Milo Manara nel Labirinto
3 October 2026 - 6 January 2027
One of the leading figures in contemporary comics, Milo Manara is the protagonist of the Labirinto della Masone’s autumn exhibition.
Promoted by the Fondazione Franco Maria Ricci in collaboration with COMICON, VISIONI. Milo Manara in the Labirinto explores the artist’s work through one of the symbols most deeply connected to the identity of the place itself: the labyrinth.
The Labirinto della Masone – born from Franco Maria Ricci’s cultural vision and enduring relationship with Jorge Luis Borges – provides the ideal setting from which to approach Manara’s work, weaving together the threads of imagination, myth and exploration that run through much of his artistic production.
Over the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, Milo Manara has created a visual universe that engages with literature, cinema and the great tradition of Western art. VISIONI invites visitors to explore this world through a remarkable selection of original comic pages, illustrations and preparatory drawings from the artist’s archive, as well as private and international collections.
The exhibition unfolds across three thematic sections, each offering a different perspective on the labyrinth as it appears throughout Manara’s work.
The first section explores the Labyrinth as a metaphor for the subconscious and the imagination, bringing together works centred on intimate exploration and the mechanics of storytelling. Alongside pages from Fone – an explicit homage to Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel – the exhibition features Giuseppe Bergman, whose adventurer protagonist serves as the artist’s alter ego, exploring dreamlike, exotic and philosophical worlds; Journey to Tulum, born from Manara’s artistic collaboration with Federico Fellini; and Escape from Piranesi. By evoking paths that depict the labyrinth as a mental space, these works reflect on the relationship between dream and reality, the artist’s identity and the construction of narrative.
The second section, The Labyrinth as a Place of Myth, presents a selection of scenic designs created by Manara for Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Mythological figures, deities and metamorphoses inspired by Ovid accompany visitors into a universe where the labyrinth becomes a place of desire, deception and transformation. At the heart of this section stands the Minotaur, the enduring emblem of the relationship between the symbol and myth.
The final section, The Inner Journey, is devoted to pages from The Name of the Rose, Manara’s comic book adaptation of Umberto Eco’s celebrated novel. The work represents one of the most significant points of convergence between Milo Manara, Jorge Luis Borges and Franco Maria Ricci. In Eco’s novel, Borges is honoured through the character of Jorge of Burgos, while the narrative itself revolves around the labyrinth of the abbey library. The selected pages also suggest a dialogue with the Labirinto della Masone, echoing its geometry, perspectives and spatial organisation.
To mark VISIONI, Milo Manara has created an original artwork dedicated to the Labirinto della Masone. Conceived especially for the exhibition, it pays tribute to the place that hosts it and serves as the exhibition’s signature image.
As with all exhibitions at the Labirinto della Masone, VISIONI is accompanied by a catalogue published by Franco Maria Ricci Editore, with essays by Pietro Mercogliano and Claudio Curcio.