ARTEVENTO Cervia torna con la 46° edizione: tra gli highlights la mostra inedita dedicata all’Olanda e il collettivo artistico Bimana dalla Colombia

Easter Preview – from 4 April to 3 May – Exhibition “The Hague Air Gallery – Painted Wind” | Magazzino del Sale Torre, Cervia - Italy
From 23 April to 3 May – 46th ARTEVENTO International Kite Festival | Italy - Cervia – Pinarella Beach, Magazzino del Sale and other locations

This spring, ARTEVENTO – International Kite Festival returns to Cervia (Italy) with a new format for its 46th edition, which will feature even more guests and events. The large themed exhibition hosted at the Magazzino del Sale Torre in Cervia – always one of the distinctive features of the event – will exceptionally open early this year, on Easter weekend, before the official start of the festival itself which starts on 23 April on the beach at Pinarella di Cervia.

The spotlight of this special exhibition preview will be on the Netherlands, with a unique and never-before-seen exhibition entitled 'The Hague Air Gallery – Painted Wind', dedicated to the extraordinary collection of kites developed from an original idea by Gerard van der Loo and Els Lubbers in the late 1980s. The collection was intended to promote the union between wind and painting, thanks to the intuition of using the kite as a canvas, submitting it to the interpretation of visual artists from different schools and imagining the sky as a gallery. This initiative marked a turning point in the history of artistic practice at the heart of the cultural project developed by ARTEVENTO, which has made Cervia the home of wind art. In view of the cultural and symbolic value of this operation, which brings an unpublished Dutch collection of great historical importance into the spotlight for the first time, it was decided to dedicate a longer opening period to it, offering the public a real prelude to the festival. The entire project is under the patronage of the Embassy and Consulate General of the Netherlands.

The four main themes of this edition of ARTEVENTO are linked by the slogan “Fratello vento” (Brother Wind), chosen as this year's unifying thread. The first theme concerns the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis, directly referenced in the slogan for the Canticle of the Creatures and for that universal message of harmony, respect for nature and all its creatures, and care for the planet, which has always been intrinsic to the spirit of ARTEVENTO. The second theme pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded in 1926 to the Sardinian poetess Grazia Deledda, considered the “poetess of the wind” and dear to the event for having chosen Cervia as her second home. The third theme celebrates the 40th anniversary of the twin town relationship between the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Prefecture of Ibaraki in Japan, renewing the intercultural dialogue based on the ancient tradition of kite flying and the encounter between the West and the East. The partnership between the Kite Capital and the Contemporary Circus completes the thematic picture.

The event will officially kick off with the exhibition ‘The Hague Air Gallery – Vento Dipinto’ (Painted Wind), held at the Magazzino del Sale Torre in Cervia from 4 April to 3 May. The exhibition is the result of work that has enabled curator Caterina Capelli, Art Director of ARTEVENTO and representative of the ICPI of the Ministry of Culture for the project on kites as intangible cultural heritage, to recover an extraordinary collection of painted kites, long forgotten, and to attribute the right value to that body of work, recognising its merit as a milestone in the history of the Wind Art Movement. The exhibition, organised in collaboration with Holland Kite Team, offers an impressive itinerary dedicated to the origins of environmental art, a movement that uses wind as its medium and finds its most important international home at the Cervia festival. The striking spaces of the Magazzino del Sale Torre will display 20 Japanese Edo-style kites equipped with 17 retaining cables, each 30 metres long, painted by Dutch artists from a wide range of expressive currents, who were challenged to tackle a new medium for the first time, foreshadowing the collections that would later bring together artists from different European Community countries in similar projects. In a historical moment such as the present, the decision to present such a pioneering collection takes on even deeper meaning, in keeping with the ideals and values of ARTEVENTO.

Following the Easter weekend preview, the full festival programme will start on 23 April and run until 3 May, for a total of 11 consecutive days. The splendid natural location of Pinarella beach, nestled between the salt pans, the pine forest and the sea, at the southern gateway to the Po Delta Park, will welcome over 200 invited artists from more than 50 countries across 5 continents, joined by 2,000 spontaneous international participants who will fly their kites dedicated to this edition's claim, “Brother Wind”. Innovative artists, masters of ancient traditions, professional wind designers, original performers, champions and sports pilots of acrobatic kites from all over the world will interpret all the variations of a practice that, in over 2500 years of history, has influenced the progress of humanity, uniting East and West, past and future, and every discipline of human knowledge in an intuitive and original way. Since 1981, ARTEVENTO has been selecting the most original interpreters of the ancient art of kite flying and inviting them to Italy to take part in what is now the world's longest-running International Kite Festival, a legendary event that has made Cervia the spiritual home of a diverse international community of artists and enthusiasts.

The Guest of Honour at the 46th edition will be the artistic collective Bimana from Colombia, which has chosen ARTEVENTO for its European debut, sharing the spirit of the festival that every year showcases the most innovative creators of new and unexpected forms. Its works will bring life and colour to the festival's new unmissable attraction, the performance La Parata delle Creature (The Parade of Creatures), designed specifically for this edition as a joyful, engaging collective and immersive celebration of the wonders of nature, paying homage to the spirit of respect for all its elements inherent in the Franciscan Canticle. Coordinated by the dynamic Alejandro Uribe, Bimana will bring to Cervia its large three-dimensional works born from the intuition of merging the world of 3D air creations with that of puppet theatre in a new form of expression and performance famous in South America, sharing the spirit of the festival that every year showcases the most innovative creators of new forms and unexpected performances.

Jellyfish, whales, frogs, chameleons, snails, birds, giant butterflies and other creatures from the animal world, worn as puppets in the context of this engaging exhibition, will interact with flying kites and enhance the magical atmosphere of the Festival Village, transformed into a Wonderland by the diversity of wind installations on the seashore called 'Giardini del Vento' (Wind Gardens), featuring oversized flowers, jellyfish, colourful hearts and anthropomorphic creations, all strictly original and presented on Pinarella beach by their creators themselves.

Every day, the festival will offer the public a wide- ranging programme of cultural and artistic events suitable for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. As usual, the eagerly awaited Flag Ceremony will officially open the event, while there will also be special postmark cancellations, the Special Award for Merit in Flying, the Cervia's Cup, Italian Aerobatic Championship organised by STACK Italia, ARTEVENTO's sports partner, the flight of the giants, acrobatic kite dancing to music, the night flight “Knock on the sky and listen to the sound” and the magical “Night of Miracles”.

Music, theatre and dance will also contribute to making the programme unforgettable, with delegations from the East and young ensemble orchestras, workshops for children and courses for adults that will interpret the slogan “Fratello vento” (Brother Wind) in the spirit of St Francis. In addition, the public will be able to attend contemporary circus performances at the Flying Circus Arena, as well as presentations and round tables on the themes of the environment, nature, equality, integration, accessibility and peace. Once again this year, the Fiera del Vento (Wind Fair) will be held on the beach, with a specialised market selling kites and wind toys, together with a food & beverage area.
A major added value of this edition will be the presence of Cinema du Desert, for the first time on Artevento beach, a solar-powered mobile cinema that combines the charm of spectacular outdoor film projections with the importance of educational and social films.

The festival's longstanding focus on Japan, developed over more than 40 years of friendship between ARTEVENTO, the Japan Kite Association and the Tako No Hakubutsukan Museum in Tokyo, is reflected in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the twinning between the Emilia-Romagna Region and Ibaraki Prefecture. The anniversary will be celebrated with a series of events that will begin during the festival and continue until autumn, culminating in a major exhibition dedicated to Japan scheduled for October. This solid relationship has its roots in the early editions of the festival, thanks to the continued participation of numerous members of the Japan Kite Association, including its president Masaaki Modegi, director of the Tako No Hakubutsukan Museum in Tokyo, who in recent years has donated precious kites to the festival director Caterina Capelli as a sign of esteem and to promote the development of the ARTEVENTO museum project. These same kites will be among the highlights of the October exhibition, which will present to the general public the scientific cataloguing of these donated kites, carried out by the Department of Demoethnoanthropology of the University of Perugia. The collection represents a sort of small branch of the Tako No Hakubutsukan Kite Museum in Tokyo in Emilia-Romagna, sealing the diplomatic relations between the two regions.

This tribute to Japan also aims to highlight one of the most significant results of the fruitful collaboration between the Central Institute for Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture and the School of Demoethnoanthropology of the University of Perugia, which identified ARTEVENTO as a guardian of ancient knowledge and Caterina Capelli as the perfect living witness in relation to the theme of “kites”, for the project entitled “Protection and preservation of traditional heritage knowledge and practices of living witnesses at risk of disappearing”. The anniversary will also be celebrated through dedicated exhibitions, with a tribute to the recently deceased kite master Mikio Toki and a special workshop on the construction of traditional yakko dako kites for children from 23 April to 3 May.

Finally, the fourth and final theme of the festival brings to fruition the successful collaboration with ATER Fondazione Emilia-Romagna Teatri and strengthens the now well-established link between ARTEVENTO and contemporary circus. Confirmed by the participation of kite flying pilots, protagonists of the legendary evolutions staged in Cirque du Soleil's Toruk show, the dialogue between the world of kites and that of nouveau cirque is expressed to the fullest thanks to the introduction of this year's new attraction: the Flying Circus Arena, a large arena for outdoor performances, located within the Festival Village on the beach to host a series of live shows for adults and children, including Circo El Grito, L'abile teatro, Duo Caos and Simone Romanò.

We anticipate that the celebration of the partnership between kites and contemporary circus will extend further thanks to the exhibition of painted kites by ARTEVENTO creator Claudio Capelli as part of the Grain du Ciel Festival, set in Montreal, Canada, in the cultural and sustainable development hub of Tohu, the heart of the Citè des arts du cirque. Capelli's portraits for flying, the result of an experiment that originated in The Hague Air Gallery collection on display at the Magazzino del Sale, will arrive in the “circus mecca” in August 2026, coinciding with the Grain De Ciel Festival, where they will remain on display for three months.

The complete programme for ARTEVENTO CERVIA will be available on the event website: https://artevento.com/
Web: www.culturaliart.com/eventi...