Roberto Cicutto

Adriano Pedrosa is a Brazilian curator and the director of MASP, the São Paulo Museum of Art designed by the Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi. He has shown outstanding originality and innovation, anticipating themes and curatorial approaches later followed by other exhibitions around the world.

I believe that changing the point of view from which to talk about contemporary art is what an institution with the international standing of La Biennale di Venezia must do. And this is not just an aesthetic point of view, but a geographical one as well, just like in film when you shoot a reverse shot of the same scene.

This is the 60^th edition of the International Exhibition of Contemporary Art within a span of 128 years since the first, and there has never been a curator from a Latin American country.

There has always been a significant participation of South American artists in the Biennale. But it is very different when they are invited by a curator who has roots in the same culture and has developed a global outlook over the years.

His research is also focused on artists who, despite coming from different worlds and cultures, have been able to maintain the feelings, characteristics and experiences of their native culture wherever they may be.

It will be interesting to discover how many national pavilions will follow this theme and how they will address it.

I am pleased that this Exhibition includes artworks created in the past century that are now considered to be points of reference for the new generations.  And we will find many Italian artists within this movement.

Adriano Pedrosa will also direct the second edition of the College Arte, an activity inaugurated in 2022 with Cecilia Alemani that is very important to La Biennale.

I am certain that the 60^th International Art Exhibition and its curator will be able to move us and, as the curator of the 18^th Biennale Architettura Lesley Lokko said, fill in those gaps in art history with many heretofore neglected artists.