Arte Fiera 2020Sections

The 44th edition of Arte Fiera will be held from 24 to 26 January 2020 in Halls 18 and 15 of the Bologna Fair District, accessible by car from the Nord Entrance (Ingresso Nord) and with a shuttle service from the Piazza Costituzione entrance.

The 2020 edition of Arte Fiera – the second directed by Simone Menegoi, with Gloria Bartoli as vice director – has many new features. There will be 155 Italian and foreign galleries: 108 in the Main Section and 47 in the three curated and invitation-only sections, Photography and moving images (20 galleries) plus the debuts of Focus (8 galleries) and Pittura XXI (19 galleries), for a total of 345 artists at the fair.

The three invitation-only sections:

Focus is one of the main new features of Arte Fiera 2020: a section devoted to art from 1900 to 1950 and to post-war masters, with a different curator each year. Intentionally small, it is an in-depth study of a specific aspect of 20th century art.

This first edition is curated by Laura Cherubini, an esteemed art critic and historian who has chosen to concentrate on renewal and innovations in Italian painting from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.

“Painting is a language that has always characterised and identified Italian art and artists. My idea was to present a concise sample and offer a panorama of the fertile and diversified period that preceded the so-called “return to painting.” Only to discover, once again, that painting has always been here.

Focus therefore concentrates on the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, years in which painting was plentiful and intense in Italy, even if it was often called dead and buried. The guiding thread of this section presents confirmations, discoveries, and more than a few surprises. All of the artists are remarkable and diversified, and cannot be labelled in a unique trend, movement, or group. Italian painting: always at home” (Laura Cherubini).

The following galleries will participate in this section: A arte Invernizzi (artist: Mario Nigro), Cortesi Gallery (Giuseppe Santomaso), Galleria dello Scudo (Gastone Novelli), Michela Rizzo (Fabio Mauri, Saverio Rampin), Mazzoleni (Lucio Fontana, Gianfranco Zappettini), Richard Saltoun (Bice Lazzari), Ronchini (Franco Angeli), Tornabuoni Arte (Piero Dorazio).

Pittura XXI, curated by Davide Ferri, is the first section of any fair (Italian or foreign) devoted entirely to contemporary art, and offers a panorama of paintings by emerging and mid-career artists from Italy and abroad. This proposal is both daring and timely, presented at a moment in which painting has made a vigorous return to the art scene.

“In a compact and limited space in the fair, Pittura XXI will attempt to point out a number of guiding threads in research conducted by recent generations of painters. At the centre of the section are a few of the possible paths of contemporary figurative painting: a move toward representation that seems to arise momentarily from a sort of abstract magma or, just the opposite, from an abstraction that implies a figurative grammar; the proposal of an agile, even impudent representation that superimposes past forms and models (even the one preceding the Avant-garde) on pop images; at the opposite end: minimum, reflective, inevitably metalinguistic representation.

Pittura XXI includes works by 30 mid-career artists (many from abroad) who began painting in the early 2000s and are presented by about 20 galleries. The section highlights the work of artists who in recent years (especially in Italy) have developed a movement in which painting plays a leading role” (Davide Ferri).

The new section includes: 1/9unosunove (artists: Simon Callery, Jonathan Vandyke), A+B Gallery (Markus Saile), Arcade (John Finneran), Bernhard Knaus Fine Art (Giacomo Santiago Rogado, Karim Noureldin), Boccanera (Nebojša Despotović, Andrea Fontanari), CAR DRDE (Damien Meade), Cardelli & Fontana (Mirko Baricchi, Beatrice Meoni), Eduardo Secci Contemporary (Chris Hood, Pierre Knop), Ex Elettrofonica (Federico Pietrella, Pesce Khete), Francesca Antonini (Guglielmo Castelli), Galleria FuoriCampo (Eugenia Vanni, Michele Tocca), Luca Tommasi (Mark Francis, Phillip Allen), Monica De Cardenas (Gianluca Di Pasquale, Ivan Seal), Monitor (Peter Linde Busk, Matteo Fato), Norma Mangione Gallery (Michael Bauer), P420 (Adelaide Cioni), Pinksummer (Jorge Queiroz), RIBOT (Jonathan Lux), The Gallery Apart (Corinna Gosmaro, Alessandro Scarabello).

Now in its second edition, Photography and moving images, once again entrusted to the Fantom curatorial platform (Selva Barni, Ilaria Speri, Massimo Torrigiani, and Francesco Zanot), is a showcase of some of the most recent studies in photography and video as well as of some essential reference points from the past.

“The section combines the classical and traditional uses of the two forms with an experimental approach aimed at the study and observation not only of the subjects represented, but also of the expressive means employed.

Photography and video increasingly invade our daily life (both real and virtual), assuming a critically important role and creating an aesthetic, social, philosophical, and political elaboration of everything that surrounds us. They no longer merely record changes and mutations: they are essential agents of the transformation of the world and of our relationship with it” (Fantom).

The following galleries will participate in Photography and moving images: aA29 Project Room (artists: Kyle Thompson, Tiziana Pers), Dep Art Gallery (Tony Oursler), Galleria Marcolini (Aneta Bartos, Christian Thompson), Michela Rizzo (Antoni Muntadas, Katerina Šedá, Francesco Jodice), Galleria Poggiali (Goldschmied & Chiari), Gallleriapiù (Matteo Cremonesi), Marcorossi (Rune Guneriussen), Martini & Ronchetti (Lisetta Carmi), MC2 Gallery (Lamberto Teotino, Justine Tjallinks, Paolo Ciregia), Metronom (Christto & Andrew), MLZ Art Dep (The Cool Couple, Discipula, Källstrӧm+Fäldt), Otto Zoo (Paul Kooiker), Pinksummer (Luca Trevisani), Podbielski Contemporary (Giulio Di Sturco, Massimiliano Gatti, Yuval Yairi), Shazar (Giacomo Montanaro), Spazio Nuovo (Marco Maria Zanin, Edouard Taufenbach), Traffic Gallery (Mattia Zoppellaro), Umberto Di Marino (Francesco Jodice, Pedro Neves Marques, Sergio Vega), Viasaterna (Alessandro Calabrese), z2o Sara Zanin (Mariella Bettineschi, Silvia Camporesi, Ekaterina Panikanova).

Photography and moving images is supported by Mercedes-Benz, automotive partner of the fair with Stefauto.