The fourth edition of Arte in Nuvola opens its doors on Friday, November 22, kicking off the most anticipated weekend in the Roman art scene. Hosted in the spaces of the Nuovo Centro Congressi Nuvola–a building designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and whose lightweight construction soars among the Rationalist architecture that characterizes the Eur district–, the 2024 edition calls together 140 national and international galleries, devoting special attention to Central and Southern Italy.
What not to miss at the Arte in Nuvola art fair in Rome
The youngest of the great modern and contemporary art fairs in Italy welcomes 140 galleries, along with a rich program of special events.
Founded in Florence in 1981, Tornabuoni Art lands in Rome in 2023, an international reference point for modern and contemporary art.
Portrait of Alighiero Boetti. Photo from Wikipedia
With works by Greta Schödl, a fundamental protagonist of 1960s visual poetry, and Nedda Guidi, sculptor of ceramics and founder of the iconic feminist collective Cooperativa Beato Angelico (1976), the public is invited to retrace the most vibrant instances of women's movements claiming more space within the contemporary art debate.
Courtesy Galleria Richard Saltoun
© Shadi Ghadirian, Quajar7, 1998. Courtesy Podbielski Contemporary
Giuseppe De Nittis, Sarah Bernhardt as Pierrot, 1879. Photo from Wikiart
Herbert List, Giorgio Morandi in his studio in Bologna, 1953. Photo from Wikipedia
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- Marianna Reggiani
- 22 November 2024
Since its debut in 2021, Arte in Nuvola has in fact filled the great void of art fairs in the lower peninsula. Galleries and exhibitors from cities such as Naples, Pescara, Sorrento, Scicli, Avellino, Nuoro, and Modica thus have an opportunity to showcase their selected artists to a constantly growing audience–thirty six thousand visitors were counted in 2023 alone–that consacrates Arte in Nuvola as one of the leading art fairs. Historic galleries and big names from the 20th-century art will not of course be missing.
In addition to the booths, a wide program of side events–exhibitions, performances and talks–animates the spaces of the Nuvola: from the exceptional reconstruction of Pietro Consagra’s Roman studio through a series of precious shots by Claudio Abate and nine photographs by Ugo Mulas, to the tribute to Piero Guccione, “the painter of the sea”; from the exhibition on the greatest Italian photography from the 1960s, Il gioco delle identità, to the unprecedented dialogue between Pino Pascali and Giuseppe De Nittis.
Portugal is the special guest country of this edition, focus of the exhibition Uma Volta ao Sol (A Tour Around the Sun), which invites to discover the most recent generation of artists on the Portuguese scene.
Great space is given to performance: four artistic interventions by Francesco Fonassi, Iginio De Luca, LU.PA (Lulù Nuti and Pamela Pintus) and Francesca Cornacchini. Then, during the last day, a special talk will attempt to answer the everlasting question: What do we talk about when we talk about performance?
After the first, exceptional participation in 2023, the Ministry of Culture confirms its presence with some of its most representative museum and cultural institutions: Direzione Generale Archivi, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Museo delle Civiltà and, finally, Fondazione MAXXI, which will offer the public two selected works from its collection, House without a title (1999) by Sislej Xhafa and Climbing (2000) by the duo Vedovamazzei.
Arte in Nuvola–“a young and smart fair,” as artistic director Adriana Polveroni called it–continues to make space for itself in the all-Nordic scenario of great art fairs, with the clear and specific mission of expanding its public, making contemporary art an engine that unites different generations and institutions.
Here are five must-see booths and events from this fourth edition.
Opening image: Portugal is the special guest country of this edition, focus of the exhibition Uma Volta ao Sol (A Tour Around the Sun)
After its last participation to Arte in Nuvola with a special exhibition dedicated to Alighiero Boetti, this year Roberto Casamonti's historic gallery presents a selection of works by artists that have been crucial to the Italian 19th century: from the soft, naive figures of Ferdinando Botero, Tuscan by adoption, to the erasures of Emilio Isgrò, from the futurist geometries of Enrico Prampolini to the eclecticism of Carol Rama.
Founded in Florence in 1981, Tornabuoni Art lands in Rome in 2023, an international reference point for modern and contemporary art.
Specialized in Postwar art, the London-based gallery has carried on, since 2012, an indefatigable research to rediscover women artists that have been ignored and neglected by critics.
With works by Greta Schödl, a fundamental protagonist of 1960s visual poetry, and Nedda Guidi, sculptor of ceramics and founder of the iconic feminist collective Cooperativa Beato Angelico (1976), the public is invited to retrace the most vibrant instances of women's movements claiming more space within the contemporary art debate.
Among the side events, the exhibition creates an unprecedented journey of fifty shots taken by some of the leading figures in contemporary photography. The huge and wide theme of personal and collective identity is thus declined through many artistic subjectivities–among many, Letizia Battaglia, Vanessa Beecroft, Lisetta Carmi, Shirin Neshat, Luigi Ontani–which also use a plurality of expressive means: self-portraits, anthropological investigations, photographs of protest.
Another unprecedented itinerary of the fair is the comparison between two artists separated by time, but who are actually united by a strong capacity for experimentation. Giuseppe De Nittis, a revolutionary of light and color in the wake of the Impressionists, and Pino Pascali, among the undisputed protagonists of Arte Povera, participate here to a dialogue curated by Adriana Polveroni that intends to dwell on the revolutionary scope of the work of the two sons of Puglia, the guest Region of this edition.
Among the booths belonging to the Ministry of Culture, the Istituto Centrale per la Grafics presents a selection of works from its collection, with a strong focus reserved for the 20th century. Giorgio Morandi, Filippo de Pisis, Alberto Burri, and Jannis Kounellis–artists that have always considered drawing and engraving techniques as primary media rather than simple supports–have been chosen to represent here the immense heritage kept in the Palazzo Poli and the Palazzo della Calcografia in Rome.