It was while visiting an event dedicated to engraving in Venice that, talking with Maestro Giorgio Trentin (father of the historic Associazione degli Incisori Veneti), Domenico Fratianni had the idea of creating, in his own Campobasso, an event to open this extraordinary but little-known art to the general public, “outside the official circuits”.
He thus wrote a manifesto-text that has guided, through satisfactions and difficulties, the Biennale dell’Incisione Italiana Contemporanea “Città di Campobasso” (as it was called until 2020) up to its eleventh edition; on the occasion of that edition, the manifesto was revisited to be gradually brought to fulfilment in all its potential.
The BIIC is currently one of the longest-running biennials dedicated to engraving in Italy and, probably, the main — if not the only — point of reference in Southern Italy.
Over 625 artists
3 guest countries
Over 300 works received as donations
15 catalogues distributed to national and international libraries
On 17 November 2022 the XI edition of the BIIC “Domenico Fratianni” was inaugurated, for the second time at Palazzo GIL in Campobasso — the most suitable venue for an exhibition like the Biennale, which this year pairs the 116 works by the invited artists with the entire engraved output of Carlo Carrà, made up of 111 etchings and lithographs, on loan from the Archivio Carrà in Milan.