24rd Premio Cairo
A new edition of Premio Cairo, the most authoritative and prestigious award for young artists in Italy, will take place from October 14 to 19 at the magnificent Museo della Permanente in Milan. The prize is organized by ARTE magazine, published by Cairo Editore and directed by Michele Bonuomo.
The jury will be chaired by Bruno Corà, President of the Burri Foundation in Città di Castello, and will include some of the most respected figures in the art world: Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice - Mariolina Bassetti, Chairwoman of Christie’s Italy - Chiara Gatti, Artistic Director of the MAN Museum in Nuoro - Lorenzo Giusti, Director of the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo - Gianfranco Maraniello, Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Municipality of Milan - Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Director of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome and finally, the great Emilio Isgrò, master of the “erasures”, one of the most internationally acclaimed Italian artists in contemporary art.
Maria Giovanna Zanella
Wood-fired bread (flour, water, and sourdough starter), 200x200 cm.
Exploring the body as a place of vulnerability and friction, as well as passion, desire, and impulses, Maria Giovanna Zanella's work gives shape to a physicality that is living matter. “Love and eroticism are transversal,” says the artist, “they represent all the highs and lows we are capable of.” In the case of the work in competition, entitled Buoni, the discourse is entrusted to a sculpture made of bread: a set of elements that recall fleshy masses, anatomical fragments, as well as organic fossils or magmatic concretions. The different qualities of flour and yeast used, and the variable temperatures of the specially constructed oven, have determined combinations of color, density, and texture that are largely unpredictable, with a result (both formal and symbolic) that manages to synthesize the immediacy of primitive art with the complexity of contemporary excesses. Equally emblematic of nourishment and perishability, abundance and waste, Buoni embodies a decomposed yet prolific organism, unpredictable and contradictory but irresistible, which enriches the thematic focus of his artistic practice with further meanings: on the one hand, ‘demystifying’ the body to show it free of stigmas, fears, and taboos; on the other, contemplating its “titanic fragility and beauty,” thus accepting the power and limitations of human experience.
Sara Boggio
The artists in the competition