The Bugatti Segantini Award to the Neapolitan Rosaria Matarese

The 66th Bice Bugatti Segantini Award will be awarded to Rosaria Matarese. The 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award will go to the Neapolitan artist. The exhibition “Rosaria Matarese. The body, the object and the figure”, curated by Prof. Massimo Bignardi, hosted from 7 June to 13 July at Villa Vertua, will trace a brief anthological path, which will conclude with a section entitled “Imaginary correspondences: the relationship between Milan and Naples in the 1960s”. The Bice Bugatti Segantini Award, one of the longest-running art exhibitions in Lombardy and Italy, is organized as always by the Libera Accademia di Pittura “Vittorio Viviani” with the patronage and contribution of the Municipality of Nova Milanese and has the support of the Rossi Foundation. The exhibition also has the patronage of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, the Lombardy Region and the Province of Monza and Brianza. The scientific committee of the Bugatti Segantini Prize, composed of Giuseppe Bonini (former vice director of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts), Gaetano Fanelli (dean of the Department of Design and Applied Arts of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts), Alessandro Savelli (artistic director of the LAP), after having examined several hypotheses of deserving artists together with Prof. Massimo Bignardi (curator of the Prize), has decided to award Rosaria Matarese the recognition for her career for the year 2025. The inauguration of the 66th Bugatti Segantini, with the awarding of the artist and the opening of all the exhibitions that articulate the “first phase” of this edition, is scheduled for Saturday, June 7, at 5:00 p.m. The program also includes a conference by Prof. Bignardi, who will illustrate the long activity of Rosaria Matarese. The lesson will also be made available online, on the LAP Youtube channel, to be a tool for a more conscious vision of the exhibition.

In the rooms of Villa Vertua, a selection of works created by the artist between the early sixties and 2020 will be presented. A path that starts from the informal material paintings to the object collages, to the 'practicables' created in the mid-sixties, to the ironic figurations and neo-object compositions created during this decade.

The painting “Exhnaton”, created in 2003 (110×60 cm), will be acquired by the Civic Art Collection, thus adding to the Prize collection. Born in 1941, Matarese is one of the deans of painting in Italy. Her artistic career began in 1959 and in the following decades she has been the interpreter of a painting attentive to the sign with clear hints of an 'organic' sensuality that has then reached a compositional dictation where she highlights her strong narrative abilities. Considered one of the protagonists of the Italian art scene that, in the sixties, dialogued on equal terms with the New York artists, creators of assemblages and the attention to accumulation, typical of the poetics of those artists who found themselves, in 1960, in the theoretical line of Nouveau Réalisme, Matarese exhibited in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2011, at Patartemide, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, in 2015. Among the latest solo exhibitions, noteworthy are the one set up in 2016 at the PAN Palazzo delle Arti in Naples and in 2017 at the ARCOS Museum in Benevento. The Bugatti Segantini 2025 will be divided into two exhibition venues, Villa Vertua and Villa Brivio, inside the park in the centre of Nova Milanese, and the programme will also include other exhibition opportunities and collateral shows. A heartfelt event is the "Dinner with Art", which will take place on Saturday, June 14 (in case of bad weather the event will be postponed to June 21). A convivial evening in the courtyard of Villa Brivio, a collective dinner characterized by some "ingredients" from 2016: guests dressed in white, food brought from home, no waste to leave. During the evening it will be possible to visit the exhibitions. A combination of sociality and art, with a solidarity fundraiser, which in the last edition saw the participation of over 400 people. After the summer break, the Bugatti Segantini Award will resume in September/October with the second phase of the review dedicated to special and international projects curated by the Rossi Foundation. Rosaria Matarese was born in Naples in 1941. She studied at the Art School of Naples and at the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples. She taught at the Art Institute “F. Palizzi” in Naples. She began exhibiting in the 1960s, with her participation in the First Painting Exhibition Tavolozza d'Oro in 1959 and in the Rassegna Nazionale d'Arte Giovani del Mezzogiorno, Circolo Artistico Politecnico, Naples in 1960. Her first solo exhibitions were held at the Galleria 1+1 in Padua in 1967 and the Galleria Carabaga in Genoa in 1968. “She is Neapolitan and therefore quite charged with that philosophy of life that has always reduced reality to staged reality” (Germano Beringheli, La camera per amare di Rosaria Matarese, in “Lavoro”, Genoa, 14/4/1968). He was part of the group “Linea Sud” with Persico, Luca, Bugli, Paladino, Morelli and the critics Stelio Maria Martini and Luciano Caruso. Recent solo exhibitions include: 2003 Rosaria Matarese, Casina Pompeiana, Naples; 2005 Matarese: the poetry of existence. From stranded wood to wearable sculptures, Riflessi Gallery, Villa Avellino, Pozzuoli (Naples); 2006 Abu Ghraib, Salle Dumas, Institut Français de Naples Grenoble, Naples. Sberleffi, Salle Caroline Sagot-Duyauroux, Institut Français de Naples Grenoble, Naples; 2012 Fabio Donato – Rosaria Matarese, double solo exhibition, Community Foundation of the Historic Center of Naples, Naples; 2015 Patartemide, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Naples; 2016 Antologica, PAN Palazzo delle Arti, Naples; 2017 Antologica, ARCOS Museum, Benevento; 2022 Artist's commas-Rosaria Matarese, Open Movement, Naples. Among his recent participations in group exhibitions, reviews and awards are: 2011 Pataphysical exhibition for Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, Istituto Patafisico Partenopeo, Benevento. (S)blunt objects, EticOAtelier, Brescia. Change disc, Villa Giulia, Pallanza (Verbania). 2011 The state of the art, 54th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. “The state of the art” Ex tobacco factory Centola, Pontecagnano Faiano (Salerno); 2012 Twelve at the same time, Civic Museum of the Town Hall, Veroli (Frosinone). MattinArte – One hundred and fifty artist lakes for “Il Mattino”, PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples; 2015 Shake up in Accademia 1980-1990, Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, Naples; 2017 A subjective vertigo. Aspects of art in Naples between painting and object 1960-1967, Museo-FRaC Baronissi (Salerno); 2017 Exhibition of the restoration of the work La casa del gioco (1965-1966), GAM, Turin. His works are in museums and public collections, including: Museo del Novecento, Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples; Museo ARCA, Monumental Complex of Santa Maria La Nova, Naples; National Cancer Institute – IRCCS Foundation, Milan; Galleria Arte Moderna, Turin; Museo-FRaC Baronissi (Salerno).

Among others, those who have written about her are: Vitaliano Corbi, Ciro Ruju, Gino Grassi, Massimo Bignardi, Mario Franco, Ada Patrizia Fiorillo, Germano Beringhelli, Enrico Crispolti, Mario Persico, Luciano Caruso, Dario Giuliano, Stefano De Stefano, Giorgio Di Genova, Nicola Spinosa, Ela Caroli, Nino D'Antonio, Riccardo Notte, Stelio Maria Martini, Maurizio Fagiolo, Germano Celant, Simona Weller, Paolo Ricci, Lea Vergine.