Finalists’ Exhibition 
Mestre Painting Prize 2024

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Mestre, Centro Culturale Candiani
From 14 September to 20 October, 2024
Third floor exhibition rooms

From 14 September to 20 October 2024, the Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre hosts the collective exhibition of Premio Mestre di Pittura 2024, organized by Il Circolo Veneto and Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, under the patronage of Regione del Veneto, Città Metropolitana di Venezia and Comune di Venezia, with the collaboration of Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. The exhibition will display the finalist works, selected by the prize jury.

The Mestre Painting Prize was founded in 1958 by the far-sighted conception of the artist Andreina Crepet Guazzo, who since the early 1950s had hoped for a cultural revival of the mainland, in conjunction with the economic revival underway in those years. After ten successful editions attracting some of the most famous names on the Venetian pictorial scene and beyond, the Prize lapsed in 1968.
It was revived in 2017, after half a century of oblivion, by the energy and passion of members of the Circolo Veneto and since 2018 it has been organised in conjunction with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia as a partner in selecting the works and organising the exhibition and the catalogue.

Bearing testimony to the ties between the Prize and the Musei Civici, and as was the case in its historic editions, again today a work by the winner of the Mestre Painting Prize will be added to the patrimony of the Municipality of Venice in the collections of the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna at Ca’ Pesaro.

Created in collaboration between the Municipality of Venice and important Venetian cultural institutions such as the Accademia di Belle Arti and the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, and supported by a large group of generous patrons and private sponsors to showcase contemporary pictorial art, the renewed Mestre Painting Prize reaches the eighth edition of its renewed series in 2024. Again on this occasion, the Prize is open to everyone without limits of age, sex, nationality, and can depict any subject.

The jury of the Mestre Painting Prize comprises illustrious art historians and professionals in the cultural sector, as well as the presidents of the jury who have alternated in the various editions: Stefano Zecchi, Philippe Daverio, Gianfranco Maraniello. Since 2021, the Lifetime Achievement Award has honoured an artist who has had a long and distinguished career, not only by their artistic merits, but also their connection with the region. In 2021 Ennio Finzi and in 2022 Giorgio Di Venere; in 2023 Luigi Voltolina; in 2024 the Prize will be awarded to an artist chosen by the organising committee.

Finally, in the numerous initiatives related to the Mestre Painting Prize and its long tradition, since the last edition a path of remembrance has been created for the winning artists of the historic editions, honouring their memory, starting with Ernani Costantini, the winner of the first edition in 1958 and Corrado Balest, winner in 1959.

Venue

Centro Culturale Candiani
Piazzale Candiani, 7
30174 Venezia Mestre

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Exhibition dates

From 14 September to 20 October, 2024
Admission free