From June 27 to July 19, 2026, the Mirad’Or museum in Pisogne (Lake Iseo) will present “Anima mea,” an anthological exhibition dedicated to the German painter Alan Bee (1940–2018)—an enigmatic and fascinating figure in contemporary European art.
Curated by Paolo Campiglio, with supervision and coordination by Flaminio Gualdoni and Marco Lagorio, the exhibition is spread across two venues: the Mirad’Or and the Church of Santa Maria della Neve. It is organized in collaboration with the Alan Bee Association and the ABC-ARTE gallery (Genoa–Milan), under the patronage of the Municipality of Pisogne. The exhibition traces Alan Bee’s body of work from 1975 to 2002, a collection that speaks to the theme of sustainability.
A man of finance who painted in secret—far removed from the gallery scene and the art market—Alan Bee made mystery the hallmark of his artistic existence, choosing to reveal his work only after his death. There were no museums, no galleries, and no conventional career. There was only painting—a message entrusted to the world in silence, under a pseudonym that serves as a manifesto in itself: “Alan,” evoking light and beauty, and “Bee”—the insect, a symbol of the natural world and the central source of inspiration for his entire body of work.
The exhibition explores his creative output from 1975 to 2002. Heavily influenced by the German avant-garde of the post-war period—with echoes of both analytical and informal painting—his artistic inquiry manifests in canvases defined by intense color, tactile surfaces, abstract textures, and the inclusion of physical objects. A recurring and obsessive element is the beehive: its hexagonal structure repeats across the canvas in a modular fashion, serving as a metaphor for an ideal society founded on cooperation, equality, freedom, and collective dignity. The painting of Alan Bee is an ethical, political, and visionary body of work—a hymn to nature, solidarity, sustainability, and the equitable distribution of resources; these are themes the artist anticipated decades ago, and which today resonate with greater urgency than ever. Bees—with their inherent fragility and their irreplaceable role within ecosystems—lie at the heart of a global discourse that his work had already foreshadowed.
