Le Sirene, 2020

Andrea Benetti (Bologna, Italy, 1964) is an Italian visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, photography, drawing, installation, and video art. His work explores the relationship between the earliest manifestations of human creativity and the language of contemporary art, developing an original artistic vision that reinterprets archaic symbols, primordial forms, natural elements and imagery associated with prehistoric culture.

In 2006, he conceived and authored the Neo-Cave Art Manifesto (Manifesto dell’Arte Neorupestre), officially presented in 2009 at the 53rd Venice Biennale, at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, within the Nature and Dreams (Natura e sogni) pavilion. The Manifesto provides the theoretical foundation for his research and proposes a contemporary reinterpretation of the origins of artistic expression. Through stylised anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, essential geometric forms, gestural marks and textured surfaces, Benetti develops a distinctive visual language that connects ancestral memory with contemporary sensibility.