The second edition of the Massimiliano Galliani Under 35 Drawing Award is again promoted by the ArtMacs cultural association and Montecchio Emilia Local Council. Founded by the family of artist Massimiliano Galliani after his premature death, the ArtMacs cultural association intends to spread and consolidate his memory, as well support younger generations.
The prize was awarded jointly to Chiara Calore, represented by Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, Milan, Canneto sull’Oglio (MN) and Pietrasanta (LU), and Sawsan Al Bahar, represented by Firetti Contemporary, Dubai (UAE), with the following motivation: “These two artists highlight spaces of sensitive cultural dialogue through human realities that penetrate into the metaphysical silence of drawing to find that fatal equilibrium of energy between geographical distance and moral closeness. On the one hand, the European West of Chiara Calore with its fusion-hybrids, molecular aggregates between primitivism and contemporary cosmetics, in the cathartic canon of an archetypal yet futuristic gaze; on the other, the Middle East of Sawsan Al Bahar with the stable codes of a domestic intimacy that measure universal belonging beyond any political and religious moralizing, by re-stating the liberty of an entropic gaze on the world that accompanies the vaporous nature of the work. A joint award that becomes an iconographic embrace hallmarking cultural empathy between young artists belonging to a motivated generation and ready for a new social awareness, attentive to the technological canon yet without forgetting the iconographic roots of the image, by opting for drawing that returns, with urgency and method, to the centre of the cultural chessboard.”
The works were purchased by the association in order to create a collection dedicated to contemporary drawing, while Montecchio Emilia Local Council, which joins artMacs in the process of celebrating memory and supporting new talent, has also acquired works and will organize an exhibition of the winners in 2023.
The work of selection and the decision for the Award were conducted by a jury comprising Omar Galliani, artist and member of the artMacs Association, Fausto Torelli, Mayor and Councillor for Culture of Montecchio Emilia Local Council, Gianluca Marziani, curator and art critic, Vanni Cuoghi, artist and professor at the Aldo Galli Academy in Como, lecturer Eleonora Frattarolo, Professor of Cultural and Environmental Heritage at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts and member of the Scientific Committee of the Rimini Drawing Biennial.

Chiara Calore, represented by Galleria Giovanni Bonelli (Milan)

Sawsan Al Bahar, Sawsan Al Bahar, represented by Firetti Contemporary, Dubai (UAE)