UMBERTO CAVENAGO AND GALLERIA DEL PREMIO SUZZARA
A COLLABORATIVE STORY

Premio Suzzara was born in 1948. Dino Villani, one of the fathers of italian advertising, founded it, supported by then-mayor Tebe Mignoni and writer-director Cesare Zavattini. It stood up among similar initiatives because of the jury composition and the nature of the prizes.

Regulations stated that he jury shouldn’t just consist of experts, including a worker, a farmer and an employee too. Prizes were provided by the farmers and workers of Suzzara and by all the productive forces of the land: they could have been a wheel of grana cheese, a calf, a foal, a kitchen stove, barrels of wine, a piglet, sacks of flour, butter, sausages, chicken, eggs and whatever else people would offer. For that time it was a great idea, perfectly immersed in the local scene, charged with simbolysm, since the art-work value was equated to the value of the products of industrial and rural labour. “A calf in exchange for a picture doesn’t lower the picture. It makes the calf fly”, Villani summed it up.

The winning works remained in the property of the town and were preserved for a future Gallery dedicated to labour, from the first exhibition theme: “Labour and workers in the world of art".

Premio Suzzara was inspired by a surprising and utopian concept: art must not be elitist, but respond to a need for beauty which is common to people of any social and cultural status. Suzzara’s collection showcases the italian discussion about realism during the fourties and  fifties of the 20th century. Among the artists of that period beeing in the collection: Armando Pizzinato, Renato Guttuso, Giuseppe Zigaina, Renato Birolli, Aligi Sassu, Domenico Cantatore, Giulio Turcato, Franco Francese Bepi Romagnoni, Titina Maselli.

During the sixties, the age of the booming economy, labour and civic engagement continued to be at the core of Premio Suzzara, though through forms of expression connected to the new tendencies of italian realism.

In 1975 the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea was born (since 1976 the Premio stops, after its 28th edition). It partly leaves realism and showcases great contemporary artists such as Mauro Staccioli, Nicola Carrino, Giosetta Fioroni, Concetto Pozzati, Gianfranco Pardi, Gianni Colombo ecc.
In 1989 the Premio restarts and gains its 46th edition in 2008. Since 2002 the museum Galleria del Premio Suzzara exhibits more than 800 artworks acquired during a period starting at the end of WW2.

SITO WEB: http://www.premiosuzzara.it

Umberto Cavenago's research joins the passion for art and for design. His works are related to the surrounding architectural space and establish a destabilizing formal dialogue. He taught at Bergamo and Urbino Fine Arts Academies, experimenting with painting, anatomy, multemedia design, interactive systems and sculpture. He exhibited at XLIV Venice Biennale, Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin at the “Metropolis” exhibition, the 23th São Paulo International Art Biennial and Officine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin, at "Esperienza Italia150º". Since 2015 he manages an indipendent space inside one of his installation, the Steel Alcove, which is hidden in a wood in the Lange region.

WEBSITE: http://cavenago.info/en/