Curated by Marco Sammicheli, 26 March – 26 May 2026
Volumnia presents One hour of light, the monographic exhibition telling of Davide Groppi’s path through lamps, luminous constructions and scenographic insights that give depth to the darkness and substance to the light.
Davide Groppi’s story is that of a formidable inventor of light. International designer and businessman, in four decades he has distilled a distinctive aesthetic applied to light, creating an acclaimed and award-winning collection of lamps.
For Groppi, the design of light embraces architecture, evokes artistic forms, complements space: it nurtures relationships. Volumnia opens its doors to a large monographic exhibition that tells a story that began in 1988. One hour of light, curated by Marco Sammicheli, not only explores the designer’s creative career but also becomes a device imagined by Groppi himself to offer visitors a moment of amazement. The exhibition celebrates utopia and the reality of aesthetic design. The first part of the exhibition weaves through five utopias of light, unique pieces, between the possible and the impossible, between nature and artifice. Visitors are led through a sequence of inhabited walls, within which artificial light appears in a unique, joyful and amazing way, as if for the first time. These are works of poetry, at times denying function and rationality, they are rhetoric figures. The set-up designed for the exhibition runs along the central nave of the Church of Sant’Agostino. Groppi divides the exhibition into metaphysical volumes that run across the space, inhabiting the hospitality of Volumnia, the place returned to the city by the founder Enrica De Micheli and previously illuminated by the designer in 2018.
The exhibition is an opportunity for presenting VERA, the amaranth-painted Limited Edition lamp for Volumnia. VERA is an illusion. The bulb is a hologram that appears when switched on. A conjuring trick for a table lamp that generates direct, indirect and diffuse light. A marriage of shapes: the transparent glass cone, the cylindrical aluminium base that abandons natural finishes to dress up in bright painted red, the spotlight that guarantees a very high light quality.
Along the exhibition path, it is also possible to discover UMASI, a new lamp by Davide Groppi, presented as a preview.
