The "Right to Togetherness"

The Foundation THE BANK ETS - Institute for Studies on Contemporary Painting presents in the halls of its headquarters in Bassano del Grappa (VI), from May 24 to September 30, 2026, Ensemble _2026. Biennial Observatory on emerging painting in Italy, the first edition of an exhibition project dedicated to monitoring and promoting the new generations of painters under 40 active throughout the national territory. The exhibition, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, aims to investigate and return to the public the complexity and vitality of contemporary painting research in Italy, from North to South of the country. The exhibition brings together one hundred artists who reflect, in a direct or transversal way, on themes related to the painting medium, meta-painting and its expansion into the territories of installation, video art, and performing arts, as well as on the dialogue between figuration and abstraction. The title of the review is a formal call to collectivity and claims the “right to the Whole,” one of the aesthetic principles of the founding artistic group of the Salon d’Automne in Paris, according to which works should be enjoyed as a vibrant ecosystem, valuing the cohesion of collective sound, rather than the virtuosity of the individual. Just like in musical ensembles, where different identities converge to compose a more complete and broader harmonious result, on the occasion of the exhibition at the Foundation THE BANK ETS, the hundred voices of the involved painters merge into a choral visual impact of signs, gazes, and matter. A polyphony that transforms the exhibition into a montage of perspectives, points of view, and hypotheses of rewritings of contemporary imagination.

The new Observatory in Bassano del Grappa

«The works on display present painting both in its objectual dimension and in its practice of redefining classical models of representation and narration with approaches, experiments, explorations in the wake of a redefinition of traditional genres – portrait, landscape, and still life – also through the appropriation of imaginaries coming from heterogeneous visual fields, from literature to dance, to cinema, up to music videos and digital animation,» declares Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, curator of the exhibition and general secretary of the THE BANK ETS Foundation. «Ensemble _2026 is born as a recurring appointment precisely to keep track of this path: an observatory that, from edition to edition, aims to reveal the singularities of a language that changes from region to region, while also taking into account the affinities and common resonances that traverse the entire peninsula. By returning the transformations of Italian painting through those who practice it today, the project contributes to the cultural promotion of the territory and to strengthening the role of Bassano del Grappa as an active center in contemporary artistic research,» states Antonio Menon, president of the THE BANK ETS Foundation.

The Exhibition

Through the perspectives of the one hundred selected artists, a more intimate geography of the Country thus emerges: a mapping that, surpassing pure regional cataloging, transforms the pictorial surface into a topography of the gaze capable of retaining and manifesting the atmospheres and tensions of the peninsula. The exhibition, which will be inaugurated on Saturday, May 23 at 6:00 PM, is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM or by appointment, summer closure from July 20 to September 6 inclusive. Free entry.
For information: M. +39 335 7180804, info@fondazionethebank.org, www.fondazionethebank.or