41. Edition: 27 – 30 January 2017
The facts:
– 178 Exhibitors
– 153 Galleries
– 48.000 visitors … read more
The Bolognese art fair Arte Fiera 2017 presented itself in a new guise. Founded in 1974, with the 41st edition it is still the oldest enduring Italian art tradeshow. This year it got with her new artistic director Angela Vettese, not only a new graphic style. Moreover, the number of exhibitors was slimmed down. To compare: in 2016 there were 222 exhibitors thereof 190 galleries in three halls, in 2017 there were only 178 exhibitors thereof 153 galleries in two halls. Due to the will of Angela Vettese, a selection committee of gallerists and as well art historians defined criteria to focus more on quality than on quantity. A special attention was payed to the curatorship of the stands.
At the same time, the 41st edition was even more extended into the city: besides numerous additive exhibitions in the Bolognese museums, the section “Polis” should encourage the dialog between the art fair and the city. For the duration of the show there were “Time Specific Artist Lectures, Site Specific Artist Lectures” curated by Chiara Vecchiarelli.
Back to the proper tradeshow: Angela Vettese and the selection committee curated the main section (123 galleries) and the solo shows (18 galleries). Simone Frangi was responsible for “Nueva Vista” (3 galleries) to focus on the balance artistic discourse and saleability. The artistic director paid special attention to photography. Even though in nowadays to take photos is quasi an action like eating and drinking, she wanted to make a difference between the daily snapshots and technical and artistic reflected photos of artists. Another aspect to point at photography was that it is to distinguish from other art disciplines by its easy technological 
reproducibility.
Entirely dependent on the possibility of reproducibility is the sector of publishing, bookshops and art magazines. New was the bookshop “Printville” curated by A+Mbookstore, which offered rare volumes accompanied by a selection of current art books and catalogues. Despite many novelties, there were as well faithful stands like the small Turin editor Carla Bertola with her co-founder of “Offerta Speciale” Alberto Vitacchio. Besides their – since 1978 biannual published – poetry and art featuring magazine, they are issuing small limited art editions.
Overall the decision to smaller the 41st Arte Fiera was a good one. Many galleries presented their artworks not only with the commercial view, but also in consideration of the visual appearance. Even though numerous exhibitors brought their classic artists, this year they were mainly from the 1950s to 1970s, there were contemporary artworks on view, often mixed successfully with older ones. Regrettably, like the previous editions, there were only few international galleries, so that it was a mainly Italian event despite the international visitors.
In the second part of our Arte Fiera review, we will concentrate on some booths, which attracted our special attention with regard to the curatorship.
Continue with part 2