Rome Quadriennale d'Arte

The Rome Quadriennale d'Arte

The Rome Quadriennale d'Arte is the most important exhibition dedicated to contemporary Italian art. Promoted by the La Quadriennale di Roma Foundation, it is held every four years at the Palazzo Esposizioni on Via Nazionale, in the Monti district, in the heart of the capital. Since its first edition in 1931, the event has been tasked with capturing the state of art in Italy, offering the public and critics a broad and reasoned overview of the research of artists active in the country.

"Fantastica": the 18th edition

The eighteenth Quadriennale, titled "Fantastica", took place from October 11, 2025, to January 18, 2026. The project recounted the first twenty-five years of Italian art of the new century through five paths of investigation, bringing together 54 living artists, born between the sixties and the late nineties, including 16 under 35 and 45 first-time participants. On display were 187 works spread over approximately 2,000 square meters, with a significant share of site-specific productions created specifically for the spaces of the Palazzo.

Five sections, five curators

The edition was entrusted to five curators, each responsible for a thematic section: Luca Massimo Barbero, Francesco Bonami, Emanuela Mazzonis di Pralafera, Francesco Stocchi, and Alessandra Troncone. The five paths explored self-representation, independence and autonomy of language, the role of photography in contemporary art, procedural creativity, and the theme of the unfinished body.

• The exhibition was enriched by a calendar of performances designed to continuously activate the exhibition path, creating a dialogue between body, space, and work.
• On the mezzanine floor, the collateral exhibition "The Young and the Masters: The 1935 Quadriennale" was set up, a tribute to the historic edition of the thirties.

A historic institution in the heart of Rome

Hosted in the Municipality of Rome, in the Lazio Region, the Quadriennale is an event awaited by the entire Italian art system. The Palazzo Esposizioni, designed by Pio Piacentini and inaugurated in 1883, is the natural home of the event. Visiting "Fantastica" meant traversing twenty-five years of artistic research, including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and performance, in one of the most prestigious exhibition spaces in the capital.