L'ARDUO CIMENTO. Living in the mountains – Living in the desert

Housed within Palazzo Pepoli – the Museum of the History of Bologna, from 2 to 19 October 2026, the exhibition L’ARDUO CIMENTO – Living in the Mountains, Living in the Desert by Guido Moretti presents one hundred works, including acrylic paintings and drawings, as well as three videos, each comprising 200 drawings taken from the Travel Notebooks.

The exhibition is organised across three sections:

• The Trentino Alps
• The Sahara and Middle Eastern Deserts
• Upper Mustang – Last Tibet

Nature appears harsh, dominated by a primal force that imposes silence and restraint upon humankind. In extreme territories, from the mountains to the desert, inhabiting is never a neutral act: it is a challenge, a constant test of adaptation, balance and attentiveness. Here, the landscape does not welcome; it questions. It does not protect; it exposes. It demands presence, knowledge and responsibility. The forms of habitation become essential, sometimes minimal, always mindful of a limit that cannot be crossed without consequences.

Desertification is advancing, glaciers are retreating and the planet’s temperature continues to rise. Vast territories could witness the exodus of populations towards more habitable regions. Faced with this scenario, there are places that have, since time immemorial, forced humankind to contend with extreme conditions.

These are the territories of extreme heat and extreme cold: the deserts and the mountains.

Places far apart, seemingly opposites, yet united by millennia-old knowledge that has enabled the people who inhabit them not only to survive in highly hostile environments, but also to give rise to civilisations and cultures that today can offer valuable insights for tackling an increasingly threatened future.

The central message of the exhibition takes shape precisely in this reflection. The three videos, accompanied by a narrator’s voice, recount the knowledge developed over the centuries by the peoples of these territories, showing how those living in the extreme cold and extreme heat have not only been able to adapt to extreme environmental and climatic conditions, but also to build cultures and civilisations that today can serve as a model for an increasingly mindful use of resources.

In this era of climate change, these landscapes reveal themselves to be not only extreme, but also ahead of their time. They foreshadow transformations that are only now beginning to manifest elsewhere: instability, scarcity of resources, and rapid and profound shifts in natural balances. In this sense, the mountains and the desert are not peripheries, but vanguards.

“The Arduous Challenge” is the story of this tension.

Not a narrative of conquest, but of engagement. Not a eulogy to domination, but rather a reflection on the limit as a generative condition. In this subtle space, between memory and transformation, between fragility and ingenuity, a possibility takes shape: that of a way of living which, in extreme territories, becomes a measure of what it means to be human and, perhaps, a direction for the future.

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Guido Moretti

An engineer, he was a lecturer and researcher in Urban Design at the University of Bologna and works as a freelance professional, having completed numerous projects, including the Hotel Savoia Regency in Bologna. He served as Chair of the Architectural Quality and Landscape Commission for the Municipality of Bologna.

In the field of research, he has focused on issues relating to the built environment in challenging settlement areas, on which he has published numerous monographs.

He has acted as a consultant to the Stelvio National Park, the Adamello Brenta Nature Park and the Maritime Alps Nature Park. His renovation project for the Baita Premessaria in the Foresta dei Violini in Paneveggio was selected for the Italian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

He lived for some time in Algiers and has worked in various countries across the Middle East and Africa on urban planning and architectural projects, including the regeneration plan for the Casbah of Algiers and a mosque in Tripoli, Libya. His project “La Casa de la Mujer”, built of rammed earth for the Union of Sahrawi Women in the Algerian Sahara, was shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2008–2010.

He is involved in international cooperation with the NGO CISP (International Committee for the Development of Peoples) and the non-profit organisation Pace Adesso – Peace Now.

He has been drawing and painting all his life, having started at a very young age as a pupil of the Bolognese painter Guido Bugli.