ExhibitionsSciascia Awards, winners of the IX Premio L. Sciascia

Stefano Luciano – Sayuri Nishimura – Elisabetta Diamanti.

Opening Thursday 24th of October, 6,30pm.
Fondazione Il Bisonte Gallery
Via San Niccolò 24/red, Firenze
Tel. 055 2342585
e-mail: gallery@ilbisonte.it
Firenze, closing on the 15th of November 2019

For several years we have hosted in our gallery the Premio Leonardo Sciascia, Amateur d’Estampes, and since two years ago the newly born exhibition dedicated to the top three winners of the Premio. These two events, which take place every other year, stem from the idea and collaboration with the Association of Friends of Leonardo Sciascia, and from year to year they have grown in quality and fame. The prize is accessed via a personal invitation and I am pleased to invite you to browse through the list of past participants and winners to measure the quality of this event. These three artists that we host for the show on Thursday 24 October are heterogeneous at the limit of the dichotomy in language and poetry, but united by the attention paid to this refined and contemporary language.

Here are some passages from the text by Francesco Izzo, included in the catalog available at the gallery:
“Leonardo Sciascia writes:” Not that I am a reliable judge: but chasing for years prints, etchings and lithographs, at least gives me the certainty of knowing what I like and what I don’t. ” This is not the assessment of the art critic – Sciascia was neither and never claimed to be – but rather of an aesthetic figure that recalls Stendhal and starts from the idea of pleasure. An amateur, then. Whether it is the print of the ‘celestial anarchist’ Luigi Bartolini, the noirs of Odilon Redon or, as I know, the poetry of Nunzio Gulino, Sciascia prefers to touch the paper of the print as a source of joy and comfort to living.

On the last nine editions there were more than two hundred and fifty-seven prints, and are forty-two the countries of the invited artists. At the end of each exhibition cycle, invariably, all the prints enter by donation into the heritage of the most important cabinet of Italian prints, “la Bertarelli” in Milan.

This is the third time in the history of the Sciascia Prize – thanks to the passion, the availability and the initiative of three of our historical partners (the Il Bisonte Foundation, in Florence, the International School of Graphics in Venice, the Museum della Carta e della Filigrana, of Fabriano) – that a selection of the most important works of the first three classified artists is brought to the attention of the public. These three additional exhibitions allow the pubblic to broaden and deepen the knowledge of the works of Stefano Luciano, Sayuri Nishimura and Elisabetta Diamanti, selected by the international jury of the 2018-2019 edition. We are showing them together under the acronym Sciascia Awards. While waiting for the tenth edition of the Premio Sciascia, do not miss the opportunity to see this joy for your eyes and refine your taste. Surely not a minor art. “