Pictures from Arte Fiera

   The Fiera is a sprawling collection of rather forbiddingly modernist buildings in the San Donato neighborhood of Bologna. The local opera company is using a theater in the Fiera while the opera house in Piazza Verdi is being renovated. The Fiera is not far from our apartment, an easy walk. 
   There is a yearly art fair called Arte Fiera which draws large crowds, according to my eyeballs. I went to it in 2022 and enjoyed it very much. Galleries, mostly from northern Italy, bring artworks to sell. This year there were two very large galleries, one devoted mainly to 'contemporary art,' and the other with mostly 'modernist' (older or more established) art.
   I go to Arte Fiera for two reasons: 1) to discover artists that I like and have never seen before, and 2) to try to figure out why the other people are there. This year I did much better with 1). To work on 2) I needed to talk to people, and yesterday I felt like looking, not talking. But I kept wondering, as I looked at monochrome paintings, cold mathematical abstractions, paintings that looked slapped together without care or skill: "why do dealers think that people will buy this stuff?" I might not mind walking by it in a museum, but I wouldn't want to live with it. 
   I will post a few pictures of artworks that I liked below. 

First, the painting that I liked the best, by Johanna Mirabel.
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​Next, pictures by Tomaso Binga (left) and Oxana Tregubova (right). I think they will expand if you click on them.

Two photos by Beth Moon..

Some paintings by Marta Roberti. These are large works on paper or parchment, and they look as if they could have been ancient Egyptian woodcuts.

I will mention a few other artists that I liked. Carla Accardi (idiosyncratic abstractions) and Mirko Marchelli (decorative motifs on decaying plaster) are familiar to me and I enjoyed their offerings this year, too. Also new to me were Diango Hernandez (distorted figuration), Odochimeg Davaadorj (Mongolian symbolic watercolors of women), and Martina Steckholzer (bird and animal paintings).