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
Engraving is an extremely lively art, in constant ferment yet little known, but it sinks its roots into the great history of art, interweaving with that of painting, where most of the great masters of the latter were also excellent — at times outstanding — engravers: Mantegna, Dürer, Titian, Rembrandt, the Carracci, Callot, Tiepolo, Goya, Degas, Corot, Klinger, Picasso, Klee, Kokoschka.
Others chose engraving as their principal or exclusive means of expression — two names above all: Piranesi and Doré.
Since 2021 the Associazione Domenico Fratianni, thanks to the invaluable contribution of its artistic director, Prof. Floriano De Santi, has brought to Campobasso the art of the great historic masters of engraving, staging retrospective and thematic exhibitions that explore, in turn, different facets of the challenges this artistic language has taken up within the great river of the history of painting.
The exhibitions are held in alternate years to the editions of the BIIC, of which they form a kind of in-depth companion path, spreading knowledge of the glorious past of engraving.
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.
About 230 works in total across 3 exhibition rooms
4 interactive totems with content created specifically for the exhibition
2 videos
Bottega BIIC – educational space
Dal 2 ottobre al 16 dicembre 2021, al Palazzo ex-GIL di Campobasso, si è tenuta la mostra tematica “Yo lo vi. Visioni di guerra in Rubens, Goya e Fratianni”: un viaggio intenso nel dolore provocato dai conflitti armati vissuti dal punto di vista dei civili e delle vittime.
