Suzzara Prize

The Suzzara prize is an artistic competition that was held in the city of Suzzara in Mantova province from 1948 to 1976 and again starting since 1989.
History.
It was commissioned by the mayor of Suzzara, Tebe Mignoni. It was born thanks to Dino Villani, with the contribution of Cesare Zavattini and the support of Stefano Cairola; it was inaugurated on 22 August 1948. Villani and Zavattini thought of the competition as a symbolic exchange between cultural work and peasant work: the winning artists received products of the earth and in exchange they gave their works to the municipal collection. The intent of the promoters of the award was to encourage the encounter between the people and the artists, the latter often perceived as unattainable and unrelated to the daily feeling of ordinary people. Consequently, the jury, alongside authoritative figures (such as Orio Vergani, Alfonso Gatto, Raffaele Carrieri and Raffaele De Grada "junior "), provided for the presence of a worker, an employee and a farmer.
The prize was attended by artists such as Carlo Carrà, Mario Bardi (winner in 1963), Emilio Vedova, Enrico Baj, Renato Guttuso, Domenico Cantatore, Renato Birolli, Pio Semeghini, Arturo Tosi, Ottone Rosai, Bruno Rovesti, Aligi Sassu , Ernesto Treccani, Silvano Girardello, Angelo Ferreri. When the season of neorealism was over, the prize was interrupted. Only in the year 1989 the Suzzara prize was re-proposed with its XXIX edition.
Over time, the municipality of Suzzara acquired a considerable artistic heritage, in particular of realist art and neorealist: in 1974 to exhibit the collection the municipality he created the "Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art", later renamed Galleria del Premio Suzzara.