Lucca Art Fair opens the autumn season of art fairs

From September 26 to 28, 2025, in the historic spaces of the Real Collegio in Lucca, Lucca Art Fair returns with its ninth edition, taking place for the first time in an autumn setting. After several spring editions, the fair symbolically inaugurates the new exhibition season, becoming the first autumn event in Italy dedicated to contemporary art. This strategic choice marks a new phase and aims to strengthen the fair’s role within the national landscape, in constant dialogue with the city’s cultural institutions. Organized by T.O.E. in collaboration with Blob Art ETS and under the patronage of the Municipality of Lucca, the Chamber of Commerce Toscana Nord Ovest, and Confindustria Toscana Nord, the fair reaffirms itself as a dynamic platform for the promotion of art.

“The Deafening Silence Between Us” — courtesy of Leila Erdman-Tabukashvili

The exhibition layout has been redesigned to make the visit more engaging, with the Rooms connected in pairs to create a more organic and immersive path. “We wanted to rethink the structure of the exhibition route in order to meet the needs of an increasingly attentive and engaged audience” explains director Paolo Batoni. “The connection between the Rooms stems from the desire to overcome the compartmentalization of spaces, turning the visit into a fluid, immersive, and coherent experience, where each gallery can naturally dialogue with the others.”

Batoni also emphasizes how current challenges can be turned into opportunities: “It is a complex period, but such phases represent chances to explore new approaches, to take risks, and to encourage galleries to pursue unprecedented and engaging paths.” This year, in fact, the number of participating galleries is growing, with a focus on emerging and mid-career artists, without forgetting the connection to established names, thus offering a time span that ranges from early 20th-century masterpieces to the most contemporary research.

The Main Section, which brings together thirty-three galleries, offers a panorama that reflects the trends of the Italian market while also opening up to international perspectives. Among the prominent names is Vladan Radovanović, a pioneer of multimedia art, presented by the Prototip Gallery of Belgrade, while the Richard Vanderaa Gallery brings to Lucca works on paper by Günther Förg, Bill Beckley, Jaume Plensa, and Peter Schuyff. Special attention is devoted to painting, revitalized by a new generation of gallerists such as Mondoromulo Arte Contemporanea and Candy Snake Gallery. Also noteworthy are dialogues between different media, such as the proposal of A Pick Gallery, which intertwines photography and painting, and that of 800/900 Art Studio, which, through the works of Lorenzo Viani, explores the representation of the female figure from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

Alongside the main section, there is space for Art Projects, dedicated to experimental projects and to solo and duo shows, and Independent, reserved for project spaces and collectives of artists and curators. This year, special emphasis is placed on the Editor section, entirely devoted to independent publishing and the artist’s book, enriched by a program of Talks that on September 27 and 28 will feature publishers and artists in public events also streamed online.

The Public Programme is enriched by the performance “Anacronista sarai tu”, created by Accademia Libera di Calci – Pino Donnaloia. “This performance is an invitation to move beyond the passive role of the spectator and become an active part of the artistic process” explains Batoni. “Drawing is not just representation, but a tool for connection, tension, and shared presence.”

With this edition, Lucca Art Fair renews its mission: to create genuine connections among artists, galleries, publishers, curators, collectors, and the public, transforming itself into an experience that places at its core the relationship between those who produce art and those who experience it. This edition also carries particular significance as it coincides with the introduction of the new 5% VAT rate on the sale of artworks, a long-awaited measure that could represent an opportunity to give new momentum and vitality to the contemporary art market.

Espositori

Main Section

800/900 Artstudio, Livorno, Lucca - Accademia Libera, Calci (PI) - A Pick Gallery, Torino -Antigallery, Mestre (VE) - Archivio Iginio Balderi, Milano - ArmandaGoriArte, Prato - Art Shop, Pistoia - Bernabò Home Gallery, Trezzo sull’Adda (MI) - Candy Snake Gallery, Milano - Fidanda, Livorno, Lucca - Franco Giannini Arte Contemporanea, Soiano sul Lago (BS) - Galería Álvaro Alcázar, Madrid (ES) - Galeria Richard Vanderaa, Girona (ES) - Galleria Cant’Art, Empoli (FI) - Galleria Entropia, Perugia - Galleria Granelli, Castiglioncello (LI) - Galleria Poliart Contemporary, Milano - Ginza Kawauso Gallery, Tokio (JP) - Giò Art, Lucca - Gio Arte, Mestre (VE) - Guastalla Centro Arte, Livorno - Ivan Capuccini, Perugia - LDX Artodrome Gallery, Berlino, Malta, Hong Kong - Moho Gallery, Tarcento (UD) - Mondoromulo arte contemporanea, Castelvenere (BN) - Olio su tavola, Lucca - Open One Art Gallery, Pietrasanta (LU) - Prototip, Belgrado (SRB) - Studio Pivuelle Arte, S. Giovanni Valdarno (AR) - T.O.E. Art Market, Livorno - Unique Contemporary, Torino - Veridieci, Corte Franca (BS) - VINCIARTE, Rubano (PD)

Art Projects

Regalarte Romarategui, Vitoria-Gasteiz (ES) - Studio Godot, Castellina Marittima (PI) -Ufofabrik Contemporary Art Gallery, Moena (TN)

Independent

AART'è Gene, Roma - Kıymet Dirican Studio, Smirne (TR) - Mariangela Fremura Studio, New York (USA) - Daniele Nannini Studio, Firenze

Editor

Andrea Benedetto, Milano/Basel - Collezione da Tiffany, Pesaro - Fare mente locale, Firenze - Ginevra Tarabusi, Pavia - Inside Art, Roma, Johan & Levi, Milano - Juliet, Muggia (TS) - Numero Cromatico, Roma Raw Messina, Roma - Spazioterra, Firenze - The Place, Bergamo - TYPEONE Magazine, UK

Info

support@luccaartfair.it

Where: 

Real Collegio, Piazza del Collegio, 13, Lucca

When: 

26 - 28 settembre 2025

Time schedule 

Friday      3.00 pm - 8.00 pm

Saturday        10.00 am - 8.00 pm

Sunday   10.00 am - 8.00 pm

Admission Tickets

Daily ticket Friday: €5.00

Daily ticket Saturday and Sunday: €10.00

Reduced daily ticket: €8.00

Easy reduced ticket: €5.00 (students with valid student ID)

Winners announced for the 16th edition of the Combat Prize

The announcement of the winners, saturday 12 of July, marked the close of the 16th edition of the COMBAT PRIZE, an international contemporary art competition organised by the Blob Art ETS cultural association in partnership with the Municipality of Livorno and supported by the Tuscany Region, the Livorno Foundation, publishing house Sillabe, partner Opera Laboratori and leading expanded polystyrene manufacturer Poliart.

The jury, composed of Ilaria Gianni, Francesca Baboni, Angel Moya Garcia, Lorenzo Balbi, Andrea Bruciati, Davide Ferri and Stefano Taddei, has selected Dilan Perisan as the winner of the Combat Prize, worth ten thousand euros, for his work ‘Excavation of the Solaris’, for the following reasons, combined with the desire to reward an emerging artistic practice that expresses great potential: "There are works that are created in a particular circumstance of life and later become disorienting daily repetitions. The winning work impressed the jury with its ability to convey urgency, emotion and imagination from simple traces of matter and lived experience; a message that becomes universal from the personal, where fragments of one's private everyday life are transformed into witnesses of time and presence in an open and engaging process, of which we see the preliminary and current stages, but can only imagine, by identifying with them, the next ones or our own.”

Dilan Perisan, Excavation of the Solaris

For the Painting section, the jury awarded the prize to José Victor De Castro Negreiros for his work ‘Nozze d’argento’, for the following reason: "When the daytime, active dimension of the creative sphere fades away, alternating with night-time dreams, we are faced with a metaphysics of the fantastic, a metamorphic reflection in precarious balance between logic and irrationality. In the selected work, the “symbolic and spiritual” function is never outdated, because it is based on the very act of creating through the imagination, according to an updated and immanent mixed inventory."

Special mention from the jury to Nicola Bindoni.

José Victor De Castro Negreiros, Nozze d'argento

For the Photography section, the jury declared Alessandro Truffa the winner with his work ‘Bee training – studies on domestication’, for the following reason: ‘Bee training by Alessandro Truffa is an image with a simple and essential presence, yet enigmatic at the same time, underpinned by a reflection on the relationship between man and nature, and capable, through details (such as the unfathomable overlapping of shadows on the palm of the open hand), of opening up spaces for the imagination and the invisible.’

Special mention from the jury to Lori Lako.

Alessandro Truffa, Bee training - studies on domestication

For the Graphics/Drawing section, the prize was awarded to Valeria Carrieri for her work ‘Dafne al contrario / Dafne suite’, for the following reason: "With Dafne al contrario / Dafne suite, Valeria Carrieri creates a site-specific work of extraordinary formal and conceptual intensity. The charcoal drawing, which unfolds like a mural frieze, reworks the figure of the nymph from classical mythology to offer a critical reflection on the patriarchal construction of the female folkloric imagination. The figures, both powerful and vulnerable, distance themselves from the aesthetic of the eroticised and silenced nymphet, often shaped by the male gaze, to claim an autonomous and plural subjectivity. Carrieri thus transforms the procession of nymphs into a parade of resistance: a community reclaiming its space and its voice. The choice of charcoal – a fragile and living material – reinforces the ephemeral yet incisive dimension of the work, evoking the deep connection between body, nature and memory. In the artist's vision, the nymph is no longer an object of desire but a subject of knowledge and tradition, the bearer of ancestral, vegetal and aquatic knowledge that resists erasure and appropriation.

Special mention from the jury to Bernardo Tirabosco.

Valeria Carrieri, Dafne al contrario / Dafne suite

The jury has declared Claudia Vetrano the winner of the Sculpture/Installation section with her work ‘Passeggero’, for the following reason: ‘The artist undertakes an investigation that probes in a unique way the idea of boundaries in a world that has become dystopian, while at the same time expressing the concept of an individual forced to move within a community increasingly devoted to social distancing.’

Special mention from the jury went to Agnese Oprandi.

Claudia Vetrano, Passeggero

Finally, in the Video - performance section, the jury awarded Mariana Ferratto with the work ‘Tutorials’ for the following reason: "For the poetic way in which she developed an act of reconciliation with her family's past, exiled after a military coup. For her attempt to record the organised resistance of political prisoners after they were subjected to a regime of isolation and inactivity as a method of physical and psychological destruction. And for her ability to construct a narrative about the sense of belonging of the second generation."

Special mention from the jury to Andisheh Bagherzadeh.

Mariana Ferratto, Tutorials

The Gallery Prizes, a special prize created in collaboration with five leading contemporary art galleries and the independent space SAC Spazio Arte Contemporanea in Livorno, consist of an exhibition project at their venues during the 2025/26 season, thus continuing the dialogue initiated during the award ceremony. The winners were:

• the A Pick Gallery in Turin selected the artists Axel Gouala, Valeria Carrieri and José Victor De Castro Negreiros as winners

• the Bologna-based gallery BoA Spazio Arte awarded the artists Michele Stagni and Francesca Mazzagatti

• the LABS Contemporary Art gallery in Bologna awarded the prize to Bernardo Tirabosco and Riccardo Androni

• the Mondoromulo arte contemporanea gallery in Castelvenere, Benevento, declared Nikko Mundacruz the winner

• for the Nashira Gallery in Milan, the winner is Besnik Lushtaku

• finally, the independent space SAC spazio arte contemporanea in Livorno selected the following winners: Gemma Mazzotti, Nikko Mundacruz, Marila Scartozzi and Francesca Filicaia.

The Poliart prize is awarded to Axel Gouala. Poliart, a leading company in the expanded polystyrene sector, will support the production of a new work by the artist.

The THE PLACE prize, promoted by the newly established marketplace THE PLACE together with the association Ultracontemporary Art Project aps (U-ART-P aps), in collaboration with Calcografica Petronilla, was awarded to Andrea Astolfi for his work Untitled (ceramolle, sugar technique, aquatint and drypoint on three zinc plates; plate 15x20 cm on sheet 25x35 cm).

Finally, the Popular Jury prize, based on the preferences expressed by the participating public, was awarded to Marcela Castaneda Florian for her work Architettura di sopravvivenza, La casa: ricchezza dell’urgenza.

The 16th Edition of the Combat Prize Now Open to the Public

The Combat Prize, the international contemporary art competition now in its sixteenth edition, is back, scheduled from June 28 to July 12, 2025. The event is organized by the cultural association Blob Art ETS, in collaboration with the City of Livorno and the Region of Tuscany, with the support of the Livorno Foundation, Sillabe Publishing House, and the support of partners Opera Laboratori and Poliart, a leading manufacturer of expanded polystyrene.

Museo della Città di Livorno

The 80 finalist works will be exhibited in the venues of the Livorno City Museum (Painting, Graphics, Sculpture/Installation) and the Giovanni Fattori Civic Museum - Granaries of Villa Mimbelli (Video). The prize gathered significant participation again this year: about 1,000 works from 34 different countries, confirming the international scope of the project.

Free-themed and with no age limit, the Combat Prize continues to be a reference point for the most current languages, offering an open mapping of contemporary artistic research, freed from purely commercial logic and capable of giving voice to new and transforming perspectives.

Among the recurring themes: identity, memory, landscape and global crises, addressed with intimate, political or visionary approaches. The works become tools that interrogate the present and open up new perspectives, inviting the viewer to step outside the boundaries of habit, generating unexpected spaces for reflection

The Combat Prize thus confirms itself as a creative ecosystem capable of adapting to societal transformations, deepening the dialogue between art, context and audience year after year.

Premio Combat 2024 - Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori - Granai di Villa Mimbelli

The 2025 Prize jury consists of Francesca Baboni, independent curator; Lorenzo Balbi, director of MAMbo in Bologna; Andrea Bruciati, independent curator; Davide Ferri, director of Arte Fiera Bologna; Ilaria Gianni, independent curator; Angel Moya Garcia, co-director of visual arts at Tenuta dello Scompiglio; and Stefano Taddei, independent curator.

The final awards ceremony will be held on July 12 at the Museo della Città di Livorno. The €10,000 Combat Prize will be awarded, along with cash prizes for the winners of the five sections, and the Special Galleries Prize, which includes collaborations with major exhibition spaces for the 2024/25 season. Also returning is the Popular Jury Prize, which will allow the public to vote for their favorite work.

It consolidates the Poliart Prize, which will support the production of a new work by one of the finalists, testifying to the value of the dialogue between art, business and the territory.

The 2025 edition also sees the birth of a significant new award: THE PLACE Prize, promoted by the newly formed marketplace of the same name together with the association Ultracontemporary Art Project aps (U-ART-P aps), in collaboration with Calcografica Petronilla. Created with the aim of bringing chalcographic engraving back to the center of attention of the new generation, the prize involves the creation of a work, produced during an artistic residency in June at Calcografica Petronilla..

The name of the first winner will be announced on June 28, at the official opening. The work produced will be exhibited together with the finalists at the Museo della Città di Livorno, renewing the dialogue between the engraving tradition and contemporary experimentation.

Combat Prize 16th Edition

dates: june 28 - july 12, 2025

Locations

Museo della Città di Livorno

Piazza del Luogo Pio, 19 - Livorno

+39 0586 824551

Sections Painting - Graphics/Drawing - Sculpture/Installation

Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori - Granai di Villa MImbelli

Photography - Video/Performance Sections

via San Jacopo in Acquaviva 65/71 - Livorno

+39 0586 - 808001/ 824607

Schedules

Museo della Città di Livorno

Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori - Granai di Villa MImbelli

Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. / 4 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. / 4 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Opening: Saturday, June 28 h 17.00 Museo della Città di Livorno

Awards Ceremony: Saturday, July 12 h 17.00 Museo della Città di Livorno

https://www.premiocombat.it/

The Finalists

Painting Section

Andrea Astolfi, Giuseppe Atzori, Azzurro, Nicola Bindoni, Pietro Catarinella, Ilaria Costaglia, José Victor De Castro Negreiros, Tali Dello Strologo, Francesca Filicaia, Giovane Ceruti, Lorenza Iacobini, Hongjing Lin, Besnik Lushtaku, Francesca Mazzagatti, Carlotta Mazzariol, Gemma Mazzotti, Nikko Mundacruz, Lorenzo Piazza, Noa Quintáns Rey, Chris Rocchegiani, Debora Romei, Michael Rotondi, Sara Sacchet, Ersilia Sarrecchia, Marila Scartozzi, Michele Stagni, Petra Stipanovic, Dorotea Tocco, Mattiasalvatore Valentino, Xi Zhang

Graphics/Drawing Section

Valeria Carrieri, Nicolas Crocetti, Antonella De Sarno, Axel Gouala, Marta Lech, Pamela Pintus, Lucia Simone, Bernardo Tirabosco, Luca Valli, Veljko Vuckovic

Photography Section

Eddy Babetto, Chiara Beretta, Luigi Di Fabio, Alice Ippolito, Ivan Terranova, Lori Lako, Lisha Liang, Leonardo Magrelli, Marcela Castaneda Florian, Mariano Vargas, Alice Muratore, Giovanna Petrocchi, Sara Rinaldi, Federica Rugnone, Thomas Schlereth, Roberto Solomita, Alessandro Truffa, Giulia Vanelli, Jenny Ymker, Elena Zanfanti

Sculpture/Installation Section

Alessia Arnone, Sara Cancellieri, Marta Caproni, Valeria Carrieri, Alberto Fanni, Axel Gouala, Agnese Oprandi, Dilan Perisan, Sofja _ Zosia Metel, Claudia Vetrano

 Video/Performance Section

Andisheh Bagherzadeh, Francesca Catellani, Duo Evangelisti _ Serenari, Leila Erdman   Tabukashvili, Mariana Ferratto, Alessia Piccinetti, Riccardo Androni, Tommaso Sacconi, Transparent,

Christa Zhou