The word FIÒCA in the historic Pavese dialect means “snowflake” (from the Vocabolario Pavese–Italiano by Carlo Gambini – 1850, Pavia). Using this title creates a kind of virtuous short-circuit, naming an event hosted within an international context such as the Winter Olympics with a dialect expression rooted in the very place where the exhibition will be held (Belgioioso, Province of Pavia).

Moreover, this title, taken from the local cultural background, integrates naturally with the works on display, which revolve around the theme of snow, and with the snow-based competitions that form the core of the Winter Olympics. It is worth noting that fioca is also a synonym for “snow” in the dialects of many areas of the regions involved in these Olympics, namely Lombardy and Veneto, creating for this exhibition a sense of belonging shared by all communities involved, near or far, in this major sporting event.

FIÒCA is, as the Mayor of Belgioioso Fabio Zucca puts it, “a small word from home that today speaks to the world.” He further highlights how “a small dialect term can converse with a global event, connecting our local identity to an international occasion.”

The Exhibition

It is said that one of the earliest works in the history of modern painting depicting a snowball fight in front of a castle is part of the Cycle of the Months at the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento: a group of frescoes attributed to the Bohemian painter Master Venceslao, dating back to 1397. Starting from this cue that binds art, snow and the Middle Ages, the exhibition connects with the project carried out over the past five years by the Administration of the City of Belgioioso, which is establishing “The Visconti Museum” within the Castle (currently being set up), while also acquiring artworks by both emerging and established contemporary artists. These works are conceived and created specifically to be housed in the Castle, with the mission of building a contemporary art collection that dialogues with the historical Visconti patronage, harmoniously blending the past with the art of our time.

Following the Castle of Belgioioso’s vocation as a centre for contemporary art, and taking the opportunity offered by the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, the idea emerged to set up an exhibition in the public wing of the Castle devoted to snow, its shapes, and its enchanting ability to transform the landscape.

A curated exhibition path has therefore been created, featuring works by young emerging artists alongside pieces by acclaimed masters of Italian contemporary painting, all centred on snow in its many forms: from snowy mountain landscapes to urban scenes under snowfall, down to the details of snow altered by human sporting activity.

The emerging artists exhibited in FIÒCA are: Alessandro Artini, Chiara Calore, Beatrice Pachera, Davide Pegoraro, Gherardo Quadrio Curzio, Domenico Ruccia.

The masters are: Alessandro Bazan, Marco Cingolani, Vanni Cuoghi, Valentina D’Amaro, Aldo Damioli, Fulvio Di Piazza, Giovanni Frangi, Daniele Galliano, Barbara Nahmad, Alessandro Papetti, Salvo, and Velasco Vitali.

The curatorship of FIÒCA has been entrusted to Alberto Mattia Martini, art critic and lecturer at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. His essay will accompany the exhibition catalogue.

From the text “Fiòca. Snow, painting, the threshold of the visible” by Alberto Mattia Martini

Snow falls like a form of thinking silence. There is a moment of the year, and perhaps of the soul, when the world becomes light, sounds are softened, outlines dissolve, and light becomes substance. Everything becomes muffled in a glow that is neither day nor night: the snow descends, soft, fioca – as it is called in the Lombard dialect – and in its falling everything seems to pause. Landscape, time, memory, all we knew transforms into a threshold-like scene.

Fioca is the snow that falls gently, almost shyly, but it is also the dim light that accompanies its descent: a word containing the sense of attenuation, of passage from presence to shadow.

From this condition arises Fiòca, an exhibition that gathers a group of contemporary artists called to engage with snow not as a simple naturalistic subject but as a material of vision and a metaphor for thought.

Their works, mainly paintings but open to other forms of expression, do not merely depict snow: they cross it, adopt it as a space for reflection, as a fragile skin on which light, time and silence imprint themselves.

This passage, between light and silence, matter and dissolution, becomes the interpretative key of the exhibition.

Snow is a visual paradox. While covering, it reveals; while erasing, it defines; though white, it offers infinite nuances.

Painting snow means questioning the very limit of representation: giving form to what dissolves form.

In the whiteness of snow lies the oldest question in painting: how to represent, how to narrate the invisible?

From Turner to Friedrich, from Monet to Morandi, from Malevich to Rauschenberg, from Ryman to Manzoni, white has been the colour of the boundary, the place where light becomes thought.

“White is the symbol of a world in which all colours, having disappeared as material phenomena, are fused into a light that contains all possibilities in potential.” […]

FIÒCA is part of the initiatives of the Cultural Olympiad of Milan Cortina 2026, a multidisciplinary, plural and widespread programme animating Italy to promote Olympic values through culture, heritage and sport, in the lead-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, taking place respectively from 6 to 22 February and from 6 to 15 March 2026.

The Municipality of Belgioioso (PV), together with Albino (BG), Casalmaggiore (CR) and Solaro (MI), is among the recipients of the ambitious “Olimpiadi della Cultura” call (to which Regione Lombardia allocated a total of 3 million euro from November 2025 to March 2026), giving life to the “Sports Village of Libraries”: a rich programme of free events open to all, featuring performances, visual arts, workshops and collective reflection moments aimed at intertwining sport, culture and memory.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE FIÒCA EXHIBITION

Department of Culture – City of Belgioioso
Manola Dettori – manola.dettori@comune.belgioioso.pv.it
Tel. +39 0382 978 420

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