The Collaboration
The collaboration between universities is now a fact, also thanks to the constant development of new technologies: universities from all over the world make agreements and promote projects in all domains, from science to humanities, to art.
BreraBicocca is the outcome of one of these agreements, an intersection between the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and the University of Milano-Bicocca. Hosting the art show Salon Primo in Bicocca is in fact the occasion to seal a convention between Brera and Bicocca, which purpose is to develop joint research while transforming Bicocca’s spaces into places of art. Salon Primo in Bicocca is also sample of what the future BreraBicocca Prize will be.
The wide and luminous spaces of the University, designed by Gregotti and Associates on the grounds of the early twentieth century industrial area, are quite suitable for art shows. The project BreraBicocca has also another mission: to aid revitalizing the neighborhood around the University, which hosts other important institutions such as the Arcimboldi Theatre, Hangar Bicocca, the Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, and the Local Council. Born from the incitement of those who grew up in the neighborhood, and implemented with passion by professors from both universities, BreraBicocca scatters the seeds of the flowers that will be, hosting young artists from the Academy and their Salon, with the certainty that the City, the Metropolitan and the Regional Administrations will seize this important opportunity for Milan.
The association Big Size Art also collaborates on this project.
Mission
With Brera’s Salon Primo 2015 the artists of tomorrow, chosen among the Academy’s best students, are presented to the public of today. The event, which starting from 2016 will award every year, along with an acclaimed master, also a young artist from the Academy, is meant to transform Bicocca’s spaces, devoted to studying and research, into public environments of art and dialogue. The University’s buildings and squares, a massive and emblematic case of an industrial heritage culturally revaluated, characterized by rigorous monochromaticity and spacious minimalism, are the ideal container for sounding the counterpoints of contemporary art, expertly organized by colleagues of the Academy. With Brera’s Salon Primo 2015 in Bicocca, art enters a place where people work and study, constituting yet another opportunity for the revitalization of a city context of which the University is also part. Moreover, BreraBicocca is also an important opportunity of dialogue between different systems of knowledge and research, the meeting of which cannot but generate culture.
Ever since its first appearance in the 80ies of the past century, Salon Primo has represented an important occasion of dialogue and exploration between artistis, artworks, and public, students and citizens, and also between didactics, research, and the state of art, with the goal of promoting the encounter between different teaching institutions. The plurality of expressions and languages transposes and identifies different poetics that, by means of their teachers, connote courses in continuity with the teachings that earned recognition and prestige to the Academy, making it an actor within the cultural debate taking place. Hence the Academy of Brera continues to be a protagonist and a witness of the dynamic teaching that opens to new ideas and research while respecting the traditional vocation towards the visual arts, supported by the dialectical relationship teacher-student, and Academy-modernity.
Big Size Art and the Institutional Challenge
The Association Big Size Art is proud to support and promote the 2015 edition of Salon Primo in collaboration with the Academy of Brera and the University of Milano-Bicocca. Salon Primo is the first significant exhibition of the promising young artists of the Academy who, starting from such event, will become involved in other similar events characterized by even a higher scientific and didactic profile. It is within such context, which we may identify as the “Brera school” and by means of which the public will come to know the new trends in Italian art, that the new protagonists of the visual arts will emerge in our country. Moreover, because of the agreement between the two universities, we will see part of Bicocca’s over thirty thousand students and Brera’s four thousand students participating in research projects of various nature that should lead to positive yet unusual results. Our initial mission was to create scholarships in order to support young artists in the creation of big artworks; no we are entering a new season in which we are considering not only the dimensions of the project but also the enhancement of its quality, while still bearing the goal of pursuing huge visions, projects, events, and anything else that can be programmed nationally and internationally. The future award BreraBicocca Prize projects us in this direction, as it sees our members stimulated and engaged in collaborating evermore with the two important educational institutions. Big Size Art.
Scientific Committee
Brerabicocca is driven by a Scientific Committee composed of Eraldo Paulesu from the University of Milan-Bicocca; Stefano Pizzi from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera; Mario Arlati from the Association Big Size Art. The Scientific Committee works closely with the Governance of the two Universities.
The BreraBicocca Project is in collaboration with the Association BigSizeArt, Banca Generali and Fondazione Cariplo.