Many things can be done with a sheet of paper: writing, drawing, folding, tearing, crumpling. Each action changes the paper and its function. B. Munari

Paper is, by convention, an unlimited extension that is interrupted here and there by signs, and thus it becomes, too, a signifier. G. C. Argan

Tornabuoni Arte gallery in Rome presents the exhibition DRAWING ROOM. Works on paper 1913 - 2013, featuring approximately forty works on paper.

From Balla to Cattelan, from Moore to Rauschenberg, the gallery traces the evolution of this flexible and intimate medium, uniquely capable of capturing the vitality of gesture. Over time, paper has become an independent expressive medium, with its own aspect and poetics.

Paper gains the human mark without resistance—whether writing, drawing, or color. As a versatile support, it adapts to both practical and creative needs. Its value lies in its ability to be effortlessly transformed, in its infinite possibilities for manipulation, and in its fragility, which becomes a metaphor for memory and time itself. From writing to preparatory sketches, from engravings to contemporary installations, paper bends, tears, is carved, and layered. Its surface absorbs the artist's gesture in an immediate and sensitive way, allowing for a unique expressive freedom.

To trace on paper is both a primordial and deeply sophisticated act. Paper allows for a faster, more direct approach than canvas, and it is precisely because of this immediacy that works on paper appear closer to the artist's original idea—more faithful to the concept they seek to assert.
The historical avant-garde movements, from Futurism to Dadaism, exalted this immediacy, while in the post-war period, artists such as Burri and Fontana explored its sculptural and material power.

In the 20th century, paper transcended its functional value to become a medium of experimentation. Merz and Christo turned it into an instrument to display vision; Paolini and Isgrò explored its conceptual potential, investigating the relationship between support, time, and memory. Even today, in the digital age, paper remains an element of poetic resistance, continuing to exert a timeless fascination.

This tension between tradition and experimentation became the theatre of the rediscovery of paper—not merely as a functional medium but as a protagonist, capable of embodying an extraordinary diversity of artistic languages and visions.