I giardini d’arte di via caravaggio

1st Edition – 2017

Giacomo Santini, Silvia Pallini, Luca Paladino, Sara Morandi, Martina Cioffi, Damoon Keshavarz, Gabriele Mauro Giuseppe

2nd Edition – June 2018

Karin Yamamoto, Stefano Regazzo, Lei Tiantian, Lorenzo Pierbattisti, Gabriele Nicola, Nicola Bevacqua, Marco Frassinelli, Alessia Fratini

3rd Edition – June 2019

Pierpaolo Maria Perrone, Tammaro Menale, Andrea Matarazzo, Valentina Aceto, Arianna Di Gregorio, Martina Di Gennaro, Elisa Bonciani

4th Edition – June 2021

Stefano Bertolini, Maria Tirotta, Jessica Maria Geraci, Giorgia Mascitti, Bruno Schiafone, Antonio Salzano

The project was launched in 2016 by entrepreneur Silvio Maresca, at the time CEO of Bluserena, a company that until 2020 belonged to the Carlo Maresca Group. The Holding’s headquarters are located in a historic building, the Fornace Forlani, built in 1880 and active until the early 1960s. The structure was later used by the company VEMAC and then became, in the 1980s, the headquarters of TELECOM offices.

In 2012, Carlo Maresca S.p.A. acquired ownership of the entire complex: 6,700 sqm of offices, 2,000 sqm of green areas, and 3,300 sqm of parking spaces, launching a major renovation project aimed at the redevelopment of the entire site. Subsequently, Carlo Maresca S.p.A. also acquired additional surrounding land, bringing together several hectares of gardens and green parkland.

I Giardini d’Arte di Via Caravaggio follow the tradition of sculpture gardens, namely private gardens and parks enriched with sculptures and works of art. Comparable examples include the Dutch Garden of Caldic, featuring works by Ai Weiwei, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, and Sol LeWitt; Daniel Spoerri’s Garden in Grosseto, hosting 103 installations by around 50 artists including Arman, Nam June Paik, and Jean Tinguely; as well as the Chianti Sculpture Park, La Marrana Arte Ambientale in La Spezia, L’Arte Ca’ la Ghironda near Bologna, and Parco Kalenarte in the small town of Casacalenda, in the province of Campobasso.

Most of these cultural initiatives were created by private individuals who chose to invest in art and, above all, to make it accessible to everyone by opening their homes and companies —often characterized by high-quality gardens and parks—to the public.

Unlike the aforementioned sculpture gardens, I Giardini d’Arte di Via Caravaggio are conceived as an opportunity specifically for emerging artists, who increasingly struggle to materially realize their ideas. The entire initiative is designed as a launching platform for a new generation of artists, offering them the possibility of having their works become part of a private collection.

The project is curated by Ivan D’Alberto, historian and theorist of contemporary art, who over the years has involved a large number of Italian Academies of Fine Arts in the artist recruitment process. Artist selection has taken place through the involvement of professors who nominated students/artists deemed worthy of participation. The selected students/artists were asked to develop a project, which was then evaluated by an internal commission within Carlo Maresca S.p.A.

The works included in I Giardini d’Arte di Via Caravaggio were created during an artist residency period in the city of Pescara, allowing participants to become familiar with the site where their intervention would be placed and to oversee the realization and installation of their works. The 28 artists received financial support to purchase the equipment necessary for the production of the artworks and their installation in the gardens.

The second edition of I Giardini d’Arte di Via Caravaggio opened to the public in June 2018; the third edition took place in June 2019; and in June 2021 the initiative reached its fourth edition.

The artists selected for the fourth edition were: Stefano Bertolini (Brera Academy, Milan, nominated by professor Sergio Nannicola), Maria Tirotta and Antonio Salzano (Naples, nominated by professors Angela Vinciguerra and Rosaria Iazzetta), Bruno Schiafone (Catanzaro, nominated by professor Simona Caramia), Jessica Maria Geraci (Palermo, nominated by professor Giovanna Filippello), and Giorgia Mascitti (Macerata, nominated by professor Antonello Tolve).
The latter two artists were selected for a new section of the Prize dedicated to Graphic Arts. The aim of this addition was to continue offering visibility opportunities to young Italian artists, despite the lack of available outdoor spaces preventing the placement of further works in the gardens.

The latest edition of I Giardini d’Arte di Via Caravaggio also included this Graphic Arts section, with two winners: Jessica Maria Geraci (Palermo) and Giorgia Mascitti (Macerata).