This book was published on the occasion of Fear of Painting: Maurizio Cattelan at Casa Malaparte, a one-night-only exhibition in July 2025 at Casa Malaparte, the famous cliffside house built on the Italian island of Capri by Curzio Malaparte (the pseudonym of Kurt Erich Suckert), a provocative writer, editor, and intellectual active in the Italian literary and artistic avant-garde. The presentation featured new and recent works such as Bones (2025)—an oversize fallen eagle carved in Carrara marble—and watercolors from the WINDOW series depicting Cattelan’s infamous duct-taped banana sculpture Comedian (2019) superimposed on various backdrops.

In addition to color plates and details of the fifteen sculptures and seven watercolors on view, the catalogue includes black-and-white installation photography that guides readers through the exhibition. In her essay “Haunted House,” Katya Tylevich examines Cattelan’s intervention into Casa Malaparte within the context of his wildly heterogeneous practice, while Francesco Bonami maps out the complex resonance of the presentation and the peculiar magic of viewing it on-site in “Curzio Malaparte’s Ghost.”