Italian
After the winter break, the Sculpture Park of Villa Fürstenberg in Mestre, home to Banca Ifis, reopens to the public on Sunday, April 27th. Two works by Tony Cragg and Agnes Questionmark are added to the 24 already exhibited, consolidating the importance of a contemporary art collection that represents a point of reference for the territory, and beyond. There is also a rich calendar of initiatives planned in collaboration with the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, of which Banca Ifis is a sponsor.
VENICE. The International Sculpture Park of Villa Fürstenberg in Mestre (VE), inaugurated in 2023 and has become a point of reference for contemporary art with over 3,500 visitors in 2024, reopens to the public on Sunday, April 27, 2025 after the winter break.
Many new features are planned, starting with those related to the collection. In fact, in the spaces of Villa Fürstenberg, two new works by Tony Cragg and Agnes Questionmark make their entrance, joining the 24 sculptures created by 14 masters, both Italian and international: Fernando Botero, Annie Morris, Park Eun Sun, Igor Mitoraj, Manolo Valdés, Pablo Atchugarry, Pietro Consagra, Roberto Barni, Julio Larraz, Philip Colbert, Jaume Plensa, Giuseppe Penone, Nico Vascellari, and Davide Rivalta.
In addition to the collection, Banca Ifis is also expanding the access times of the Park for the public. The usual Sunday openings – confirmed with continuous hours from 10.00 to 19.00 – will be accompanied by extraordinary openings on one Saturday evening a month: the schedule of openings, scheduled from 18.00 to 22.30, is available on the free Ifis art app through which you can book your visit. To make the park even more inclusive, moreover, all the sculptures in the International Sculpture Park have been accompanied by special captions in braille language, to give the opportunity to visually impaired people to enjoy the exhibited works through touch.
Even in 2025, the Banca Ifis International Sculpture Park will host a rich calendar of events, including appointments organized as part of the Public Program of the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2025, workshops, and study days.
The new works of the Banca Ifis International Sculpture Park
By 2025, the collection of the Banca Ifis International Sculpture Park will be enriched with two new works, one permanent (Versus, by Tony Cragg) and one on temporary display (Draco Piscis, by Agnes Questionmark).
- Versus: as often happens in the works of Tony Cragg (1949), Versus is based on the opposition of opposite forces, in this case a circular form, seemingly compact, which breaks down into a vortex of elliptical columns, as if moved by an internal energy. Bright orange, the work, already exhibited in 2011 under the glass pyramid of the Louvre in Paris, lends itself to numerous interpretations: depending on the perspective, it can appear as a perfect disk, or a pulsating tangle, almost organic, or a planet, an eye, a boiling mass of transforming matter.
- Draco Piscis by Agnes Questionmark (1995) is instead a large sculpture depicting a hybrid creature, perhaps a sea monster, not completely visible, inspired by the scientific illustrations of the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522). While on one hand the work reveals the inevitable monstrosity inherent in the collective imagination, on the other it represents the enormous potential that the ocean has to offer, a place of symbiosis and coexistence, a stimulus to find new adaptive solutions in a world in constant decline. The artwork will be on display until August 30, 2025.
Agnes Questionmark’s sculpture will be inaugurated on Sunday, June 1st as part of the Public Program of the Italian Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025. For the occasion, Questionmark’s work will virtually connect Banca Ifis Park to the Italian Pavilion, where the videos completing Draco Piscis will be projected. On the same day, the International Sculpture Park will also host Thomas De Falco’s performance, titled “the earth still sings.”
The corporate art collection and the International Sculpture Park of Banca Ifis
Ifis art is articulated in a series of initiatives, starting from the important art collection that the Bank has acquired over time, consisting of over 100 works by more than 50 artists, ranging from classical to contemporary art. Some of the most important works in the collection have found their natural home in the International Sculpture Park of Banca Ifis, desired by President Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio and curated by Giulia Abate and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, within the 22 hectares of garden of Villa Fürstenberg, in Mestre. The Park currently hosts 24 plastic works by 14 masters of contemporary sculpture, Italian and international: Fernando Botero, Annie Morris, Park Eun Sun, Igor Mitoraj, Manolo Valdés, Pablo Atchugarry, Pietro Consagra, Roberto Barni, Julio Larraz, Philip Colbert, Jaume Plensa, Giuseppe Penone, Nico Vascellari and Davide Rivalta. The mission of the Park includes, through also temporary projects (exhibitions, performances, workshops, study days), the “cultivation” of biodiversity (environmental, social, economic, etc.), of inclusion, related values and rights, and synergistic networks between businesses and the third sector of contemporary creativity, a prerequisite for sustainable social and economic development in the new era of “knowledge economy and social justice”.
If art is digital, how can it accelerate the enjoyment of art?
Starting from the International Sculpture Park of Banca Ifis, the Ifis art project aims to “democratize” art, making it increasingly accessible and enjoyable even to an audience less familiar with the subject. To do this, Ifis art relies on the power of new digital channels. In fact, the Bank has developed an innovative app – accessible both from the web and mobile – in which the story of each work is accompanied by unpublished video content, storytelling, and artist interviews. The app is now available on the App Store and Play Store or at the following address.
Impact measurement of the Ifis art project
At the beginning of the year, Banca Ifis’ Studies Office measured the results produced by the International Sculpture Park from a social perspective, according to the impact measurement model developed by the Bank with Politecnico di Milano. According to the responses of the 500 interviewed visitors, Banca Ifis’ International Sculpture Park generates a multiplier of 3.9: translated into practical terms, one euro invested by the Bank in the Park generates almost 4 euros of social value for the territory. This value even reaches 5.3 if we consider the cluster of participants in the workshops organized by the Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage during the 2024 Biennale di Venezia.
