Italian artist Tomaso De Luca has been awarded this year’s MAXXI Bvlgari Prize. Now in its second edition, the prize is a project that supports and promotes young artists. De Luca was chosen from a list of three finalists, which included Giulia Cenci and Renato Leotta. At the awards ceremony, the judges praised all three artists by highlighting their various approaches: De Luca’s ‘ode to freedom and diversity’, Cenci’s ‘apocalyptic sculptures’, and Leotta’s ‘silence and suspended time’ – were described as ‘powerful works that shed light on our time and reflect on the future’.
Tomaso De Luca’s A Week’s Notice (2020), a three-channel video and sound installation in which ‘miniatures of houses borrowed from cinema, architecture history and the artist’s private life fly, collapse, go crazy and jam, in an ode to the decay of architecture that seeks beauty in instability and makes trauma a ground for creation’. It was selected by the judge and via public voting ‘for the maturity and the ethical, social and political stand expressed by the work; for the subtle, calibrated and cultured poetics and the open dimension of the work, which leaves ample space for the viewer’s interpretation; for the synthesis and the ability to narrate a portion of history that has been forgotten but is central to understanding the importance of contemporary values such as emancipation and gender politics; for the promotion of all diversities conceived as a wealth for humanity.’
While the prize usually involves the acquisition of the winning artist’s artwork, this year MAXXI, in Rome, has decided to extend its support of young artists to Giulia Cenci and Renato Leotta. All three works will join the museum’s collection.
Meanwhile Marina Abramović has been awarded the Spanish-based Princess of Asturias Awards for the Arts, a lifetime award that will see the Serbian performance artist presented with a Joan Miró sculpture (symbolising the Princess of Asturias Awards), a diploma of accreditation, an insignia and €50,000.
