Exhibition “Vespa: the Icons of Made in Italy” at the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera

From 22 October 2022 to 13 January 2023 the Piaggio Museum hosts the exhibition “The Icons of Made in Italy”.

The Vespa, a myth, a timeless icon. A protagonist of the country’s industrial history, an undisputed symbol of Italian style, progress and design throughout the world. To celebrate it, at the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera, Stefano Berardino, the young Piedmontese artist with a passion for engines who has made the two and four wheels the artistic subjects of his entire pictorial production.

Spatula, colour and canvas… Berardino has created about thirty works for the exhibition, painted in oil or acrylic in a rigorous graphic style that winks at Pop Art, on a material background often embellished with sand and quartz dust.

The paintings, all large in size, narrate the Vespa as in a true “parade”: from the elegant models of the 1950s and 1960s to its more contemporary declinations. All in the context of a harmonious and enthralling display, which finds a perfect setting in the temporary exhibition hall of the Piaggio Museum, in the heart of the old Piaggio workshops and in dialogue with the unique models on display in this true “temple” of the history of Italian mobility and style.

A history to which Berardino dedicates a tribute in the paintings dedicated to other Piaggio products, such as the small car produced in France in the 1950s (the Vespa 400) and the much-loved three-wheeler Ape, without forgetting the motorbike sector, with four works dedicated to the long history of Moto Guzzi, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and great success.