Lissone Prize 2025 Names Six Winners in New Format

The Lissone Prize returns with a radically revised format at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone. Instead of a single winner, the prize now awards six artists ex aequo, splitting the endowment equally. Three curators each selected two artists for double solo shows. Stefano Raimondi, museum director and one of the selectors, chose Ariel Schlesinger (Jerusalem, 1980) and Landon Metz (Phoenix, 1985), both abstract artists linked to Neo-Avantgarde legacies. Schlesinger challenges canonical painting with calibrated burn marks that create paradoxical objects between two and three dimensions; his installations are minimal yet violent interventions in space. Metz’s paintings transform absolute form into relative, liquid, and vaguely corporeal shapes, featuring shadows of potential forms. Hanne Mugaas selected Cecilia Granara (Jeddah, 1991) and Giuliana Rosso (Chivasso, 1992). Granara’s hybrid, metamorphic bodies recall Transavanguardia, while Rosso adopts a punk aesthetic describing post-adolescent moods as existential symbols. Lorenzo Balbi chose Valerio Nicolai (Gorizia, 1988) and Viola Leddi (Milan, 1993). Nicolai expands and parodies painting with a single skilled canvas and two disorienting installations—a talking sofa and wallets on the floor—all described as oil on canvas. Leddi transforms kitsch objects into poetic visions blending daily life with psychological intimacy, hovering between figuration and abstraction.