Thaddaeus Ropac's Milan space is showing the work of Leoncillo Leonardi (1915–68), one of post-war Italy's most important sculptors, in 'Leoncillo. Perché più bruci', on view at Palazzo Belgioioso from 16 September to 14 November 2026. It is the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery and the opening chapter of a trilogy devoted to his work, developed with the newly formed Leoncillo Foundation.

Curated by Lorenzo Fiorucci, Alberto Salvadori and Azalea Seratoni, the show brings together sculptures and works on paper spanning four decades, with the body as its thread — from early olive-tree drawings and the chromatic volumes of Leoncillo's beginnings, through the faceted, Post-Cubist sculptures of the 1950s, to the Informale works of his final decade. The exhibition also marks the start of Ropac's representation of the Fondazione Leoncillo.

A centrepiece is the first public presentation of Colomba (1952–54), a work rediscovered through research by the foundation's scientific committee and restored to the configuration of its original display. The title, which translates as 'the more it burns', points to the fired clay at the heart of Leoncillo's practice — a material he turned into a vehicle for modern sculpture's expressive ambitions.

Leoncillo represented Italy at six editions of the Venice Biennale between 1948 and 1968, and his work has since been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome and Museo Novecento in Florence. Born in Spoleto, he built his reputation by turning clay into a vehicle for modern sculpture's expressive ambitions, and his sudden death at 52 cut short a career that had already left its mark on post-war Italian art.