Lucca Art Fair opens its 8th edition: All news galleries, publishers, curatorial projects, tours

From 19 to 21 April 2024, Lucca Art Fair returns to the Real Collegio, the modern and contemporary art fair that for three days will make one of Italy's most famous art cities the protagonist. Born from the urgency to strengthen and widen the network of realities linked to the art world in the territory, Lucca Art Fair, in its eighth edition, proposes itself as a platform for comparison between local and international projects belonging to the world of contemporary art.

Real Collegio, Lucca

Lucca Art Fair is organised by T.O.E. in collaboration with Blob Art ETS and under the patronage of the City of Lucca, Camera di Commercio Toscana Nord Ovest, Confindustria Toscana Nord.

For this eighth edition," says Paolo Batoni, "the selection criteria were the research and quality of the exhibitors, together with the diversification of the proposal, maintaining and strengthening the commercial energy of the event. We want to feed the ferment of new market trends and facilitate the entry of new generations of enthusiasts into the world of collecting and contemporary art".

Fifty-one contemporary art operators will be present at this eighth edition, divided into the four sections that make up the fair. Three established sections will host forty-one galleries, while the brand-new fourth section will be dedicated to art publishing and artists' books.

The main section, the strong point of the event, will include thirty-four galleries established on the national scene, proposing a happy aesthetic combination through a selection of works following a path from

a selection of works ranging from modern and post-war art to the most contemporary. The presence of painting, both figurative and abstract, and sculpture is predominant, in line with the proposal of international fairs. In the proposed itinerary, among the local projects, the exhibition project of the 800/900 Art Studio Gallery stands out. It presents a series of works by the painter Alfredo Meschi (Lucca 1905 - 1981), often considered the artistic symbol of Lucca. Meschi devoted much of his work to capturing the urban and rural essence of the city. Among the Lucca exhibitors is the Brugiati Gallery, with a selection of existential works by the Versilia artist Giovanni Raffaelli.

Dragoljub Raša Todosijević - courtesy Galerie Prototip

There is no lack of international flair, as exemplified by the Prototip Gallery in Belgrade, which presents a focus composed of photographs, drawings, and video works, but also documents, recordings of performances and actions by the "Belgrade Conceptual", a group of six artists known and recognised throughout the world, composed of Marina Abramović, Dragoljub Raša Todosijević, Neša Paripović, Zoran

Popović, Era Milivojević, and Gergelj Urkom, who gathered around the newly established gallery of the Belgrade Student Cultural Centre and established themselves on the world art scene in the 1970s and 1980s.

Concettuale di Belgrado - courtesy Galerie Prototip

The Street Levels Gallery concludes the fair's overview, offering a cross-section of the Italian and international urban art movement: Ache77, Exit Enter, James Vega, Kraita317, Monograff, Nian.

The Lucca Art Fair enriches its itinerary with the Art Projects and Independent sections, reserved for proposal galleries and non-profit realities committed to linking the most innovative languages and intergenerational dialogue. Among them is the Siena Art Institute, an international art school that, from its headquarters in the green heart of the city, is bringing to the fair a small centre of practices and experiences to establish a dialogue with insiders and onlookers. The Institute intends to open up to the world of the art market its founding values, such as attention to social practices, accessibility, technical excellence, cultural welfare, cultural exchange and environmental sustainability. The school's participation supports the concept of the art fair as a place of exchange and sharing, without renouncing its economic nature.

The fourth and new section, Editor - The Artist's Books Section, entirely dedicated to independent publishing and the artist's book, aims to highlight the kaleidoscopic nature of this aesthetic object, which in itself constitutes a platform for dialogue between the arts and the comparison of simultaneous perspectives. The range of participants brings together ten realities from different regions, representing a sample of the diversity of perspectives, intending to narrate the exchange between publishers and artists in the experimentation of new creative paths. Independent publishers such as Casa Editrice Peacock (Galzignano Terme, Padova), Forma Edizioni (Florence), Giostre Edizioni (Colle Val d'Elsa, Siena), Maschietto Editore (Florence) and Ronzani Editore (Rome) will be present. There will also be cultural workshops and independent artists such as Sincresis (Empoli, Florence), APRI (Bologna), Giorgia Abbati (Colorno, Parma), Laura Castellucci (Florence) and Letizia Ardillo (Rome).

This year, the exhibition itinerary of the fair and the exploration of the ways in which the most diverse languages of contemporary art meet will be completed by That's Contemporary! A call for VIDEO ARTS, a project entirely dedicated to artists' videos, which will be held for the second time at the fair, after its first edition at Cremona Art Fair 2024. The call, curated by Bianca Basile and Camilla Remondina, in collaboration with the artistic direction of the Combat Prize, was addressed to all artists who wish to represent the contemporary through video, a medium that more easily than others combines the disciplines that characterise, study and represent this temporal concept that synthesises time, giving it a synchronic and current image. Of the two hundred works submitted, ten were selected as the most powerful examples of personal and different readings of the contemporary. Together, the selected works interpret the present as a multifocal lens. "It is not possible to identify a single stylistic or ideological current that underlies recent trends in video art," say the curators Bianca Basile and Camilla Remondina, "so we have chosen ten works that provide a sample of the most important themes and genres. In these works, we have noticed a particular urgency to communicate sensations and reflections that have as their subject the current human condition about the problems that characterise the present on a global scale".

That’s Contemporary! A call for VIDEO ARTS - Allestimento a Cremona Art Fair

Delle duecento opere candidate sono state selezionate le dieci che, con maggior forza,

mostrano personali e differenti letture della contemporaneità. Insieme, i lavori scelti

interpretano il presente come lente multifocale.

«Non è possibile individuare un’unica corrente stilistica o di pensiero alla base delle recenti tendenze della video art - commentano le curatrici Bianca Basile e Camilla Remondina - per questo motivo abbiamo selezionato dieci opere che possano restituire una campionatura delle tematiche e dei generi più significativi. In questi lavori, abbiamo notato una particolare urgenza di comunicare sensazioni e riflessioni che hanno come oggetto la condizione attuale dell’essere umano, in relazione alle problematiche che stanno caratterizzando globalmente il presente».

See all the galleries participating in Lucca Art Fair 2024

Main Section: 800/900 Art Studio, Lucca, AD Gallery, Sesto Fiorentino (FI),

Antigallery, Venezia – Mestre (VE), ArmandaGoriArte, Prato, Art Lab, Treviso, Art Shop, Pistoia, ArteA Gallery, Milano, Artenetwork Orler, Marcon (VE), Big Eyes Art Gallery, Bologna, Billyrayart, Milano, Daliano Ribani Arte, Carrara, Di Mauer Arte

Contemporanea, Prato, Dl Arte, Milano, HR Doks Gallery, Torino

Galleria d'arte Brugiati, Monterotondo (Roma), Galleria del Teatro Romano, Fiesole (FI), Galleria delle Visioni, Piacenza, Galleria Granelli, Castiglioncello (LI), Gallerie Reflektor, Užice (RS), Giannini Franco arte contemporanea, Soiano del Lago (BS), Guastalla Centro Arte, Livorno, Laboratorio 31 Art Gallery, Bergamo, LDXArtodrome Gallery, Berlino, Marco Orler international Gallery, Oriago di Mira (VE), Monocromo Contemporary Art, Roma, Olio su Tavola, Lucca, Prototip, Belgrado (RS), RL51, Pietrasanta (LU), Schiavano Antonio Fine Art, Milano, Soave Arte, Alessandria, Stazione Arte Contemporary, Milano, Street Levels Gallery, Firenze, Studio Pivuelle Arte, San Giovanni Valdarno (AR), Veridieci, Palazzolo sull’Oglio (BS)

Art Projects: Galleria FormaPop, Roma, Siena Art Institute, Siena, Studio Godot,

Castellina Marittima (PI)

Independent: Studio Mariangela Fremura, Livorno, Studio Cristina Sammarco, Isola d’Elba, Studio Riccardo Raul Papavero, Varese, Studio Valeska Von Brase, Monaco

Editor - The Artists' Books Section: APRI, Bologna, Casa Editrice Peacock, Galzignano

Terme (PD), Forma Edizioni, Firenze, Giorgia Abbati, Colorno (PR), Giostre Edizioni,

Colle Val d'Elsa (SI), Laura Castellucci, Firenze, Letizia Ardillo, Roma, Maschietto

Editore, Firenze, Ronzani Editore, Dueville (VI), Sincresis, Empoli (FI)

That’s Contemporary! A call for VIDEO ARTS: Matteo Campulla, Monica Carrera,

Leila Erdman-Tabukashvili, Luca Granato, Susana Ljuljanovic, Eleonora Roaro,

Antti Tanttu, Vaste Programme, Sabrina Zanolini, Marzio Zorio

Lucca Art Fair 2024

Where to go

Real Collegio, Lucca

Piazza del Collegio, 13

When

Friday 19 April 15.00 - 20.00

Saturday 20 April 10 am - 8 pm

Sunday 21 April 10 am - 8 pm

Entrance fee

Day ticket Friday € 5.00

Day ticket Saturday and Sunday € 10,00

Reduced day ticket: € 8.00*.

Reduced ticket: €5.00 for students with valid student cards.

*Reduced day ticket for:

Residents of the Province of Lucca, groups (minimum 10 people), disabled and over 65s.

Free entry for children under 12 accompanied by their parents.

Contact details

T +39 3311303702 | E info@luccaartfair.it | www.luccaartfair.com

Philip Guston between humor and tragedy. Tate Gallery London

The Tate Gallery in London is showing one of the most fascinating and controversial artists of the 20th century.

Philip Guston, The Ladder 1987 National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, USA), The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Born in 1913 in Montreal, Canada, to a family of Jewish immigrants, Guston grew up in the United States, where he became one of the most famous abstract painters of the 1950s and 1960s, along with Mark Rothko and his childhood friend Jackson Pollock.

Throughout his artistic career, he experimented with many painting currents, from realism to abstractionism, becoming one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism in New York.

During this artistic phase, Guston produced a series of works characterized by gestural brushstrokes and the bold use of pigments.

One cannot but recall his early works, namely murals, and paintings that dealt with the theme of racism in America and wars abroad.

Philip Guston If This Be Not I 1945 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Univerity purchase, Kende Sale Fund, The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

During the 1960s, a historical period characterized by social and political upheaval, Guston decided to abandon abstractionism and instead produced increasingly provocative figurative works characterized by comic book-like scenes and characters with white hoods representing evil and everyday racist acts. The works of this period often depict stylized human figures, everyday objects, and surreal landscapes, which shape Guston's vision of contemporary society.

The exhibition offers visitors a view of Guston's paintings that move between the personal and the political, the abstract and the figurative, the humorous and the tragic.

Philip Guston Sleeping 1977 Promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to the Metropolican Museum of Art, New York, The Estate of Philip, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

The exhibition, which will run between 5 October 2023 and 23 February 2024, is co-organized by the Tate Modern, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Tate Modern Bankside London SE1 9TG

Dates 5 October 2023 – 25 February 2024

Winners of the 14th Combat Prize announced

With the announcement of the winners, the fourteenth edition of the PREMIO COMBAT, an international contemporary art competition conceived by the Cultural Association Blob Art ETS, in co-partnership with the City of Livorno, with the support of the Fondazione di Livorno and the publishing house Sillabe together with partner Opera Laboratori, as well as Poliart, a company a leading manufacturer of expanded polystyrene, ended on Saturday, July 8.

Museo Giovanni Fattori - Granai di Villa MImbelli

The jury, composed of Ilaria Gianni, Francesca Baboni, Lorenzo Balbi, Andrea Bruciati, Davide Ferri, Stefano Taddei, chose as the winner of the Combat Prize, worth ten thousand euros, Giovanni Chiamenti with the work Πλαστιλεῖμμα, with the following motivation: "The confrontation on interspecism and the need for an ecological and sustainable turn animate the global debate. For having been able to condense in a work of great aesthetic impact and formal finesse even in the choice of the elegant exhibition display, contemporary and urgent issues such as sustainability, the disposal of microplastics, marine ecosystems, and research on these important materials, making a technically complex and daring sculpture."

Giovanni Chiamenti - Πλαστιλεῖμμα #4 ceramica raku, termoplastica, sabbia nera, vetro, ferro, 132 x 26 x 26 cm

For the Painting section, the jury awarded the prize to Giulia Mangoni with the work Garigliano sogna Ecuador, with the following motivation:" Giulia Mangoni's painting is emblematic of a research on the place that the artist has been developing for some time, a place that she reinvents by bringing together in a single image distant and distant landscapes and giving life to a score of flat backgrounds and marks, vaguely Matisse-like, that cancels depths and distances, of tones and colors that recall a dimension of lush exoticism."

Special mention of the jury to Simone Rutigliano.

Giulia Mangoni - Garigliano Sogna Ecuador - olio su telo di mercato verde, 110 x 110 cm

For the Photography section, the jury declared Vaste Programme the winner with the work Le nostre radici, with the following motivation: "Our roots" is a project that listens to and interprets in an ironic-critical way an urgency of the 21st century, constructing a narrative on the theme of climate change. The work is an example of how photography, breaking out of its formal limitations, grafting itself with different visual systems, signs, and symbols, manages to become a body of experience that embraces relationships, spaces, and senses, acting on our civic and political awareness."

Special mention of the jury to Jacopo Valentini.

Vaste Programme - Le nostre radici stampa su profumatore auto in feltro rigido, 8 x 11,8 x 0,2 cm cad.

For the Graphics section, the jury awarded Marco Mandorlini with the work Bruciare la Mosca with the following motivation: "Constructing a different visual narrative in an iconosphere now immersed in the technological is in itself a noteworthy operation, but to add in the work something with an ancient flavor, expressed through a craft technique with poor materials but high density poetic is something that deserves then extreme attention."

Special mention of the jury to Michele Savino.

Marco Mandorlini - Bruciare la mosca - stampa serigrafica con colorazione a mano, su carta, pouches per plastificatrici e ramo di olivo 19,5 x 10,5 cm

The jury declared winner for the Sculpture/Installation section, Alexsandar Petkov, with the work 200x35 cm, with the following motivation: "Aleksander Petkov's work stands out for its presence seemingly composed and resigned, but capable of intensely evoking the processuality that generated it, in which the design of the form arises from the encounter of materials that are activated and relaunch each other. The work seems to be traversed by a force that pushes it upward, toward an ideal height that coincides with that of his studio - two meters and thirty-five centimeters."

Special mention of the jury to Francesca Bertazzoni.

Alexsandar Petkov - 200 x 35 cm cemento ed intonaco, 97 x 38 x 15 cm

Finally, for the Video section, the jury awarded the prize to Sabrina Zanolini with the work Job Interview (Waiting room / Wall sit session), with the following motivation: "For the ability to catalyze in a few minutes and in a virtuous way the attention on the relationship between body, space and time. Taking the pretext of a physical relaxation exercise to play on the logic of conditioning, the artist manages to engulf a tension that helps demystify the emotional impact of waiting.

Special mention of the jury to Luca Granato.

Sabrina Zanolini - Job Interview (Waiting room / Wall sit session)

The awarding of the Gallery Prize, a special prize born from the new collaboration with the following six leading contemporary galleries and the independent space SAC spazio arte contemporary art in Livorno, consists of the realization of an exhibition project in their spaces in the 2023/4 season, thus giving continuity to the confrontation opened during the participation in the Prize: A+B gallery in Brescia has selected as its winners Francesca Bertazzoni e Simone Rutigliano

The Romanian gallery IAGA Contemporary Art, based in Cluj, awarded Michele Savino Studio G7 gallery in Bologna has awarded the prize to James Hillman·

Borgo Lunetta 11 gallery in Cuneo, Italy, named Giulia Mangoni the winner For the Magazzeno gallery in Ravenna, the winner is Giovanni Chiamenti Venetian gallery Marina Bastianello Gallery awarded the prize to Sabrina Zanolini Finally, the independent SAC contemporary art space in Livorno Silvia Gelli Gelli as the winner. Poliart prize is awarded to James Hillman. The Poliart company, a leader in polystyrene foam, will support the production of a new work by the artist.

Finally, the Popular Jury Prize, awarded based on the preferences expressed by the participating public participants, is awarded to Gemma Mazzotti with the work Burning stars - have fun.