Una curatela di Flavio Scaloni, Gallery Manager presso Galerie Lo Scalo – The simple feather is a profoundly evocative motif, serving as a powerful visual synecdoche for themes like ascent, freedom, and the spiritual world. Its inherent lightness links it to concepts of the soul, fleeting beauty, and the delicate balance between the physical and the immaterial. The psychological connotation often centres on vulnerability or a lightness of being. In contemporary art post-1950, the feather’s symbolic potential expanded. Italian Conceptual artist Piero Manzoni utilized -also- feathers in his 1961-1962 series, Achrome, embedding white feathers into his works to explore texture and the purity of non-colour. The work of Robert Rauschenberg incorporated a stuffed eagle and its feathers in his famous Combines, injecting the natural world and its symbols of Americana into high art. In photography, the work of Irving Penn, a world-famous master of still life, frequently features delicate, high-contrast studies of feathers, notably his photographs of feathers and plumes (1970s). These close-ups transcend mere documentation to become abstract forms exploring texture, purity, and stillness. This collection celebrates the feather's enduring resonance, from symbolic object to abstract form.