One good thing leads to another.
And that is also true of the competition, "Il Bosco Stregato” (The Enchanted Wood).
No sooner has one edition ended than it is already time to plan the next, in a crescendo of ideas and suggestions, and taking on board the advice of those who are closest to us and working with us on developing new events.
Why is "Solstizio d’Estate” (Summer Solstice) dedicated to myths and legends?
Quite simply because we cannot afford to miss an extraordinary opportunity to open a window on the innermost thoughts of mankind.
Myths and legends are, indeed, a universal human creation, devised - in different eras and places - as explanations for the problems that man has had to contend with, and that transcend our ability to understand: the end of life, misfortune, success, cruelty, love that at times reaches beyond life, and hope for a better world; a world where the impossible becomes possible, even though it may only be an imaginary, temporary refuge. With the birth of philosophy and - more recently - scientific thought, the mythological approach to reality has lost value.
The wealth of myths and legends that exist suggests that their most secret source lies within the human psyche. There are no unambiguous statements.
A personal unconscious and a collective unconscious coexist in every man, with the former being composed of the knowledge each one of us gains from experience, while the latter is the depositary of the inheritance of all mankind. So if basic needs are the same, at times myths, legends and fables are themselves very similar, because they all have to provide a response to a single issue: the complexity of life.
Works from 200 artists (some already established, while others are names for the future), and including 105 women, have arrived from almost all over the world. In past editions, entrants were only allowed to use a limited number of techniques. This time there have been no such restrictions, but rather than having a detrimental effect on the quality, which has continued to improved, this has encouraged the use of more innovative, modern techniques.
Standards, meanwhile, continue to rise, however high they may already have been in previous editions. And this makes selection a particularly hard task, because works have to be excluded on the grounds of a lack of financial resources, rather than of quality, and we are unable to reward as many artists as we would have liked with their inclusion in the catalogue.
We conclude with a well-deserved thank you to all the artists who have taken part, we very much hope to be able to count on their valuable co-operation in the next edition of our competition.
Tommaso Lo Russo
Contest Winners
|
1st Prize: Ettore Antonini |
2st Prize Aubert Patrik |
3st Prize Valerio Mezzetti |
4st Prize: Annamaria Fascia |
4st Prize ex aequo Andreas Raub |
