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Carla Accardi was born in Trapani on 9 October 1924. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo.
In 1946, she moved to Rome with Antonio Sanfilippo where she met Pietro Consagra and Giulio Turcato.
In 1947 she completed her first abstract painting, entitled Scomposizione. In March of the same year she launched the Forma Group (“Forma 1” would be the name of the first and only issue of the magazine-manifesto) with Attardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli, Sanfilippo, and Turcato. In 1948 she took part for the first time in the 24^th Venice Biennale, as well as in the exhibition “Abstract Art in Italy” at the Galleria di Roma. In 1954 she met Michel Tapié, whose support marketed a watershed moment for the artist. The French critic placed her among the protagonists of his theory of art autre, alongside Burri, Capogrossi and Fontana.
The 1960s were a time of major stylistic changes. Much more vivid and varied tones of color reappeared, while the sign underwent a change in structure. The first chromatic works were shown at the Parma Gallery in New York and at the New Vision Center Gallery in London with a presentation by Lionello Venturi, in 1961.
In 1964 she was invited with a personal room to the 32^nd Venice Biennale.
These years saw the first works created on sicofoil, a transparent plastic material used for the first time for art. Works from this period include Tenda (1965), Ambiente Arancio (1967) and Triplice tenda (1969-71). The following decade was dedicated to continuous experimentation with sicofoil. Colors became less strong, with pastels sometimes dominating. By the mid-1970s the sicofoil was completely transparent, in twisting braids that emphasized the support and made the frame the protagonist (in a studied “ostension of the support and the frame” she would say, which certainly has a flavor touching on the conceptual).
In 1976 was presented Triplice tenda at the 37^th Venice Biennale in the “Arte Ambiente” section. In the 1980s, Accardi returned to canvas, which she left raw: it would be animated with colored signs, which had become very large, inside of which there might be just one color. In 1983 she exhibited at the Pinacoteca Comunale
in Ravenna and at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan; while in 1988 she was once again invited with a personal room to the 43^rd Venice Biennale, where she presented large-scale works. The next year she was represented by two historical works at the “Italian Art in the 20th Century” show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 1994 a far-ranging retrospective open at the Castello di Rivoli; in the same year she took part in the exhibition “The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Among the many solo shows and retrospectives, two big anthological exhibitions opened in Paris Parigi, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2002) and in Rome, at the MA-CRO (2004).
In 2011 the show “Carla Accardi. Segno e trasparenza” opened at the Fondazione Puglisi di Catania; for this occasion important historical works were exhibited on the two great floors of Palazzo Valle. In the meantime two volumes of the monumental catalogue of her works were released, curated by Germano Celant, published by Charta and Silvana respectively. Carla Accardi passed away in Rome on 23 February 2014, but interest in her work has continued to grow, as evidenced by the 2020 solo show Contesti, at the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the group show at the MAXXI Senzamargine Passaggi nell’Arte Italiana a cavallo del Millennio from October 2020 to January 2022, and by her inclusion in the 59^th Venice Biennale scheduled for April 2022.

Ivana Bašić was born in 1986 in Belgrade, Serbia and she now lives and works in New York.
In her work Ivana Bašić addresses the vulnerability and transformation of the body.
By fusing synthetic materials, such as silicone, and natural materials, such as wax and oil paint, Bašić’ sculptures acquire a post-human quality.
Her works are often premised on an abstracted sense of primordial matter succumbing to various conditions that are pressed upon it and undergo a series of transformations: from material to immaterial; from organic to inorganic; from human to insectile and from ground-bound matter into pure idealism.
Residing in the liminal space between life and death, these sculptural forms test the boundaries of “human minimality” while examining what constitutes the notion of “wholeness.” For the viewer, her work evokes both the repulsion and the beauty inherent to the pain and fragility of corporeality.

The artist has exhibited widely, mounting solo and group presentation at KUMU Museum, Tallinn, Estonia; The Whitney Museum, New York, US; 6th Athens Biennial, Athens, Greece; Hessel Museum of Art, Annendale-On-Hudson, New York, US; 57.Belgrade Biennial, Belgrade, Serbia; Center for Contemporary Art Estonia, Talinn, Estonia; La Panacee Museum of Contemporary Art, Montpellier, France; Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, Austria; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, New York; Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum, New York.

Jacopo Benassi (b. 1970), photographer and artist, lives and works in La Spezia. Over the years, he has developed a personal style in which depth of field is eliminated and the light of the flash becomes a signature, a stylistic limit that he self-imposes to achieve photos that are raw and without any mediation. The subjects photographed are highly disparate ranging from the underground and international music scene – starting from his experience at the B-Tomic club, which he manages with some friends – to portraits of models, actresses, artists, designers published in the most important magazines, as well as investigations of the body, including self-portraits, documentation of sexual encounters, and ancient statuary. Benassi is also occasionally a performer and musician. His experimentation with performance is always linked to music and is mediated by the photographic image, the subject and object of his research. Recent solo shows: Matrice (2022) at Fondazione Carispezia, La Spezia, PAST (2021) at the Francesca Minini Gallery in Milan, Vuoto (2020) at the Pecci Centre in Prato, CRACK (2019) double exhibition at CAMERA – Italian Centre for Photography in Turin and at the European Photography Festival in Reggio Emilia, and Bologna Portraits (2019) at Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna. He has exhibited for FotoGrafia – International Festival of Rome (2009), Vade retro. Art and homosexuality from von Gloeden to Pierre et Gilles (2007) at Palazzina Reale in Florence, Aphotography (2005) at the Changing Role Gallery in Napoli, Artissima (2006-2007) in Turin. He has worked with directors and writers such as Paolo Sorrentino, Daniele Ciprì, Asia Argento, and Maurizio Maggiani, and with creative director Federico Pepe (for COCO, a music and videoart project, and for publications by Le Dictateur). In 2011 he opened Talkinass – Paper and Records and produced magazines and live CDs of artists on the underground scene. An active self-publisher, he has created limited-edition publications and a magazine produced in real time at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He has participated in events such as No Soul for Sale (2010) at the Tate Modern in London, curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni. Recently, he has concentrated on creating performative and photographic displays based on Live Shooting, resulting in the solo show Hunt me down (2021) and collaborations with some protagonists of the Italian performance, visual, and music scene: Lady Maru for Brutal Casual (2020), Kinkaleri for No Title Yet (2017) and ONCE MORE (2020), Sissi for Rollers (2019). In 2009, the 1861 United Agency published The Ecology of Image, a large monograph of Benassi’s works. He also published the photographic books FAGS (NERO, 2020), Dying in Venice (Bruno, 2015), Bologna Portraits (Damiani, 2019), Mis Q Lee (Quinlan, 2018), and Gli aspetti irrilevanti (Mondadori, 2016) with Paolo Sorrentino. He released the LPs ONCE MORE with Kinkaleri (Xing, 2021) and Benassi plays Benassi (2019), a sonic and photographic self-documentation of his body, with remix by Khan of Finland and Jochen Arbeit. He has worked with numerous magazines in Italy and abroad, such as: Rolling Stone, GQ, Wired italia, Wired U.S.A, Riders, 11 Freunde, Crush Fanzine, Dapper Dan, Vice, Almaviva/Le Figaro, Gioia, and Purple.fr.

Armin Boehm was born 1972 in Aachen. He lives and works in Berlin (D).
Armin Boehm paints fictitious and spatially impossible scenes, based on urban layouts and architectural constructions, that are meant to evoke the inner human condition.
In an interview by Gaston La-Gaffe on FAD Magazine, the artist said “The painted surface is as vulnerable as our skin and looking at it is reaching our emotional system very directly”. Due to his tough personal path he is attracted by the painted surface, which is able to deal with the unconsciousness and emotions of the human being.
The images, which sometimes appear to be aerial views or perpetually receding landscapes, explore the idea of natural and manmade borders in geographic surfaces.
His most famous works are large-scale paintings, constructed using complex combinations of materials including fabric, oil paint, pure pigment, metal, and sand.
A majority of Boehm’s paintings have dark palettes and depict nocturnal views with small sources of light; in preparation for exhibiting his paintings, Boehm has been known to paint the walls gray and dim the lights to deepen the experience of darkness. Other subjects have included interiors, smashed trees, bucolic scenes, and car wrecks.
He received a series of Awards in 1998, Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (D) and in 2001, Cité des Arts, Paris (F).

Ambra Castagnetti was born in 1993 in Genova and she now lives and works in Milan.
She is a visual artist that works with sculpture, video, and installation.
After the bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, she graduated in Visual Arts at NABA (Milan) with a short film curated by Adrian Paci.

“Through different mediums such as sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Ambra Castagnetti explores the complex relations between the body and physical and political environment, through a political glance never lacking an implicit dimension of criticism. The evocative power of the images helps to penetrate the complex relation between poetic and political, between reality and fiction, creating a fluid imaginary. The attraction for the body always comes with a wider attraction for the living, where the animal, the mountain, water, desert, earth and sky are called to participate in a unitary narration full of intimacy” (Adrian Paci).

In her work, Castagnetti attempts to dispel and release the feelings of disquiet that arise from dealing with everyday life. Focused on natural, feminine, and animal forms, the artist redraws her feelings towards reality: the body and the mind, and the relationship between the two, become central elements. Ceramic and metal shield a soft, fragile material that would otherwise be destined to dissipate and is unrecognizable in their reflection.

Selected recent shows and projects: Palazzo Braschi, Roma (2023), Fondazione Pini, Milano (2023), New Galerie, Paris (2023), Francesca Minini, Milano (2022), La Biennale di Venezia, Venezia (2022), Manifattura Tabacchi, Firenze (2021), Eastcontemporary, Entrevaux (2021), Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2021), Mana Contemporary, New York (2020), Art Drive In, Brescia (2020), Casa Testori, Milano (2019), Villa Necchi, Milano (2019).  In 2020 she joined the residency programmes in Palazzo Monti, Brescia and Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence.

Flavio Favelli was born in Florence in 1967, in 1993 he graduated at the University of Bologna with a degree in Oriental Studies, only afterwards beginning his career as an artist. He currently lives and works in Bologna (IT).
His works have been exhibited in prestigious international institutions, including: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2022); GAM, Turin (2022); Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Milan (2021); Il bello inverso, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice (2019); Albergo Diurno Venezia, Milan (2017); UNIVERS, A METAPHYSIC STORE, Venice (2017); Art Basel Hong Kong – the Encounters section curated by Yuko Hasegawa (2013); MAXXI, Rome (2015, 2012, 2010); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2012), MACRO, Rome (2012; 2011); RISO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palermo (2011), American Academy in Rome (2011, 2010); Tate Modern, London (2010), MCA, Chicago (2009), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2008; 2007, 2002); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2008), Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul (2008), Benaki Museum, Athens (2008), La Maison Rouge (2007), MAMBO, Bologna (2007), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, (2007); Creative Art Center, Beijing (2006); Musèe d’Art Moderne de Saint- Etienne, Saint- Etienne (2005), Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles (2004), Museion – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bolzano (2003).
In 2012 the artist represented Italy at the 11th Biennale de La Habana and he has twice taken part – in 2003 and in 2013 – in the Venice Biennale. Flavio Favelli was chosen for the residence at the Italian Cultural Institute of Istanbul and in 2014 he had a solo show in the historic complex of the Galata Rum Okulu school.

Flavio Favelli creates works using old objects of décor or everyday use, such as lighting fixtures, picture frames, Fanta or Coca Cola bottles, trinkets that evoke the bourgeois aesthetic of the family environments he grew up in, or the Eastern cultures he studied at university. His works are collages, sculptures or installations in which these recycled materials are brought together, giving life to layers of meaning that isolate the object from its mere material reality, elevating it to an artistic dimension. This transition does not occur through the distortion of the object itself but rather through an amplification of its functional features, of its value as an object of use, as an object of décor, as an icon of the everyday life of the past, unwittingly existing in the present. The marked autobiographical component in these works (which also lies behind the artist’s rare performances), functions as a common filter for interpreting the various lines of inquiry that Flavio Favelli develops in all of his works, and, through a reflection on memory and the development of a “poetics of the object” centered around the exotic-everyday dichotomy, he threads together his own personal story with broader social history and political ideas.
Flavio Favelli’s works a marked sense of Italianness. In his art he develops and reworks the contradictions that came about with the rise of conceptual art (and pop-art) internationally, placing these theoretical frameworks inside the forms and achievements of the Italian conceptual tradition. The result are works with a hybrid soul, which make it difficult to know where to place him on the Italian art scene, and at the same time emphasizing the strong personal element that underlies the language used in each individual work.

Alice Ronchi was born in 1989, Ponte dell’Olio.
She grained her BA at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA), Milan, IT (2012) and her MA at the departement of Material utopias at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, NL (2015).
She attendend a Residency VSC / Vermont Studio Center, Vermont (USA) in 2017.
In Alice Ronchi’s sculptures and installations, everyday objects meet the world of invention and fantasy. The search for “wonder” is a constant theme in the art of Alice Ronchi, populated by familiar yet enigmatic figures, product of the re-elaboration in an abstract key of everyday objects. Halfway between playful and minimalist, Alice Ronchi’s work is always a perfect synthesis of formal simplicity and geometrical precision. Through the use of different media, ranging from sculpture to photography, from performance to video, Alice Ronchi questions the world with a curious gaze and returns it to us as if it were a magic place, with the ability that artists have always had of looking at the world with different eyes.

She exhibited at Gasconade space, Milan, Peep-Hole, Milan (both 2013); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; La Triennale Museum, Milano (both 2014), Galleria civica di Trento, Trento, Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam (both 2015); Macro Museum, Rome and Stadgalerie, Kiel (both 2016), MamBo, Bologna (2018), MAXXI, Rome (2019), GAM, Turin (2020).
Currently she is teaching at NABA University in Milan: Sculpture – International English course.