The countdown to the 22nd edition of the Cairo Prize for Contemporary Art, to be held on 9 October at the Museo della Permanente in Milan, has officially begun. The winner of the 2023 edition will be awarded a prize of 25,000 euros and the work will become part of the Cairo Prize Collection.
The event, organised by Cairo Editore's monthly magazine ARTE directed by Michele Bonuomo, will see the unveiling of the works of twenty young artists selected by the editorial staff of ARTE. Among the finalists is Alessandro Sicioldr Bianchi.
Each will present an unpublished work that will be assessed by the jury chaired by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President of the Foundation of the same name in Turin, assisted by highly authoritative experts from the art world; Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History-Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice; Mariolina Bassetti, President of Christie's Italia; Ilaria Bonacossa, Director of the National Museum of Digital Art in Milan; Lorenzo Giusti, Director of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Gamec) in Bergamo; Gianfranco Maraniello, Director of the Polo Museale del Moderno e Contemporaneo of the City of Milan; and finally the great Emilio Isgrò, the artist of the 'erasures', one of the most internationally renowned Italian names in the world of contemporary art.
The Cairo Prize
Born in 2000 out of President Urbano Cairo's desire to support young Italian artists and to acquaint the public with new protagonists, new trends and new languages in contemporary art research, the Cairo Prize, now in its 22nd edition, has confirmed itself over time as the most authoritative and prestigious opportunity for young artists in Italy. It is an important launching pad that offers artists the dual opportunity of consolidating their place on the national and international art scene and of living a great experience: selected year after year by the editorial staff of Arte and called upon to create unpublished works for the occasion, assessed by a Jury of the highest profile.
The biographies of the 20 artists of 2023
Alessandro Sicioldr Bianchi
The poetics of Alessandro Sicioldr Bianchi (Tuscania, Viterbo, 1990) is born from a skilful profusion of citations: trained in his father's studio, without a classical training in the academy, the artist demonstrates a deep knowledge of tradition, drawing from Mannerism and the Flemish masters the obsession for detail, as well as the uniform application of light and colour, while he owes the oneiricism of the scenes to Surrealism, and Max Ernst in particular. The threadlike and androgynous figures that populate the canvases seem caught in the midst of unknown rituals, moving between strange palaces and enchanted forests, in which even echoes of fantasy fiction resound. And so the ancient and the new meet, proving that the best way to be contemporary is not to be contemporary at all.
