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18th Quadriennale d'arte - “Fantastica” exhibition at Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome

WHERE

Rome

Palazzo Esposizioni

 

WHEN

From 11 October 2025 to 18 January 2026. 

The main periodic exhibition dedicated to contemporary Italian art - the Quadriennale d'arte - returns from 11 October 2025 to 18 January 2026

The 18th edition is entitled Fantastica, in tribute to art's ability to open up new horizons. and is organised by the Ministry of Culture through the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity and Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma, in collaboration with Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, with Intesa Sanpaolo as main partner.

Fantastica is the major collective exhibition project that narrates the current post-2000 Italian contemporary art scene, divided into five different chapters, resulting from the points of view offered by curators Luca Massimo Barbero, Francesco Bonami, Emanuela Mazzonis di Pralafera, Francesco Stocchi and Alessandra Troncone.

The exhibition consists of five chapters, resulting from the points of view offered by the five curators, and they focus on a selection of young and mid-career artists. The curators were asked to work on living artists, who became established after the year 2000, tending towards a choice of about 50 names and prioritising artists taking part in their first Quadriennale, paying particular attention to the presence of women. In its polyphonic writing arranged into distinct sections, the exhibition develops narrative frameworks that, rather than highlighting some sort of Italian specificity, intersect internationally debated themes. The selection includes artists who have spent more or less prolonged periods of time abroad, or live permanently there, and foreign artists who have chosen to live and work in Italy, reflecting the transformation of the idea of “Italianness” that the new generations have felt able to share and inhabit. The lines of enquiry developed by the individual sections of the exhibition look at the mechanisms of self-representation, the choice of the experience or form by which to be represented; the figure of the artist, the importance of being able to establish and maintain a solid identity; the artist's claim to autonomy, also in relation to institutional patronage; the status of images, never so pervasive but perhaps never so irrelevant in themselves if not approved and shared; the narrative of the human, animal or mechanical body - in an incompleteness that reveals potential and openness to further new developments.

 

The young artists and the masters. La Quadriennale del '35” is the additional exhibition project with a historical slant, dedicated to the Quadriennale d'arte of 1935, curated by Walter Guadagnini and implemented in collaboration with the Library Archive of the Quadriennale. The exhibition will feature “Acrobata”, the terracotta sculpture created by Giovanni Romagnoli (Faenza 1893 - 1976) in 1932, on loan from the Intesa Sanpaolo Collections. At the 2nd Quadriennale, the artist had a personal room, in which, along with numerous paintings, he exhibited a group of terracotta sculptures, created between 1932 and 1934, which won him one of the prizes.

 

On the 18th of September, the Gallerie d'Italia - Naples are hosting the roadshow meeting to present the 18th Quadriennale d’arte introduced and presented by journalist Nicolas Ballario.

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