ZANINI ARTE

Zanini Arte is among the most historic galleries in the contemporary art scene in Italy, a family business passed down since 1914. It has successfully transformed a passion for collecting into professionalism, always looking toward the future. The decision to handle only masterpieces of excellence—strictly unique pieces and not editions—is the result of years of research, study, and passion shared with its collectors. The mission is to satisfy collectors by advising them on works that fascinate and move them the most. Its artistic offering is innovative and high-quality, featuring prominent established names and emerging young talents.

Zanini Arte was one of the very first galleries internationally to introduce certified digital art on the blockchain as part of its artistic offering, starting in 2019. In recent years, it has focused on new technologies and digital tools in dialogue with physical creations, aiming to push boundaries and redefine the role of the art market in this new era, all while maintaining a high standard of curatorship.

The selection of artists chosen by Zanini Arte for YouNique 2025 focuses on prominent international names in contemporary art and emerging talents who have already achieved international and institutional success:

JISBAR

Francesco De Molfetta

Fabio Giampietro

Cris Devil

Andrea Vizzini

Andrea Crespi

JISBAR

Jean-Baptiste Launay, better known as JISBAR, is a French pop-street artist born in 1989 who currently lives and works in Lisbon. His works have been exhibited worldwide, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, London, Paris, Venice, Istanbul, Lausanne, Singapore, Mykonos, Australia, the Gold Coast, and Las Vegas. Today, JISBAR is considered one of the most prominent figures of his generation in the international pop-street art scene.

His works are featured in prestigious museums such as the Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi and the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris. At the latter, JISBAR presented his piece Love is the New Fame to then-French President François Hollande during an exhibition against racism and anti-Semitism. He has collaborated with major brands, including 24H Le Mans, JM Weston, Armani, BMW, Ducati, LG, Yamaha Music, and many others. His latest major project merges innovation, tradition, and aesthetics to celebrate the launch of the Cubitus watch by the renowned luxury watchmaker Patek Philippe.

JISBAR is best known for his reinterpretations of masterpieces from art history, such as The Mona Lisa, Frida Kahlo, or the iconic painting of the boxing match between Basquiat & Warhol. His creations invite the audience to discover or rediscover these iconic works, enriching them with the codes of pop-street art. The artist aims to bring a touch of modernity to these classics, making them more accessible and appealing to an increasingly broad audience.

Each piece is more than just a reinterpretation; it is infused with words, phrases, and numbers that create a new story to decipher, encouraging viewers to pause and explore every detail, uncovering fresh elements with each look. JISBAR often says that every one of his creations represents “moments in life,” like a memory captured forever in a photo album.

FRANCESCO DE MOLFETTA

Born in Milano in 1979, where he continues to live and work, Francesco De Molfetta pursued an artistic education before enrolling in the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Simultaneously, he earned a diploma in theater directing and has since taught Theater Workshop and Mime. His work has been widely exhibited in Italy, showcased in numerous galleries, and featured at major art fairs, including Miart, Artissima, Artforum Berlin, Arco Madrid, Vienna Art Fair, Artefiera Bologna, ArtVerona, and GrandArt. In 2000, he collaborated with Artedamangiare-mangiarearte, creating an installation for Macef and receiving a mention at the Trofeo Brera. That same year, he won a competition in the city of Biella, which led to his participation in an exhibition organized by the Pistoletto Foundation for Art. He also designed and produced a line of lamp-sculptures for interior design. Internationally, his works have been displayed in a significant exhibition on Western contemporary art at the Tokyo Gallery in Tokyo, at the Besançon Museum of Art in France, and by the T20 Contemporary Art Gallery in Murcia, Spain. In cinema, Francesco De Molfetta has created four short films on celluloid, still in distribution, and has received prestigious accolades, including the coveted Ambrogino d’Oro and a critical mention for his work The River-Run (Il Corso del Fiume). In theater, he has directed five productions, including serving as an assistant director at the Piccolo Teatro under Lamberto Pugelli.

FABIO GIAMPIETRO

Fabio Giampietro was born in 1974 in Milano, Italy, where he continues to live and work. Through his pioneering painting technique, which involves removing color from the canvas, he creates powerful and intense figurative works. His art has been exhibited in major cities worldwide, including London, Berlin, Bologna, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Milan, Shanghai, and Toronto. Giampietro’s innovative exploration of modern painting has established him as one of the most sought-after emerging Italian artists. In Giampietro’s work, the boundaries of art dissolve, and the interplay of three spatial dimensions with time becomes palpable, even if it remains elusive to the viewer’s eyes. His pieces mark the liberation of pictorial forms from classical constraints, continuing a well-established tradition in the history of modern and contemporary Italian art.

Giampietro’s research merges the traditions of painting with cutting-edge technologies, blending spatial and temporal planes and eliminating the contemplative distance between the viewer’s senses and the artwork’s reality. The virtual expansion of his paintings invites the viewer to experience their reality within the exploded boundaries of the piece, engaging every possible facet of psycho-sensory experience. His primary achievement lies in demonstrating that the painted work on canvas no longer possesses a central core, even as it exists and stands before us. Instead, it offers a dispersion of observation points connected to the physical movements of the viewer within the virtual coordinates created by the artist’s mind. For this reason, every step taken within Giampietro’s work also guides our journey into the dreams and nightmares of the artist’s mind, with unprecedented vividness and immediacy.

CRIS DEVIL

Cris Devil is an Italian artist whose work is deeply infused with his passions for music, guitars (which he designs, crafts, and plays), sculpture, illusionism, and the expansive world of magic. These passions serve as the primary inspiration for his unique artistic creations. Cris Devil’s works are extraordinary visual stages that skillfully blend elements of reality and surrealism, creating a powerful visual impact. Observing his pieces, one is transported into a dreamlike and ironic dimension where illusion comes alive before the viewer’s eyes. In this artistic universe, the past, present, and future merge in a mysterious dialogue, interacting through subtle plays of perspective and distorted visions. In Cris Devil’s perspective-based creations, key elements emerge through deliberate imbalances, bold disproportions, vivid colors, and the presence of unusual subjects. His style thrives on antithesis, where everything is its opposite, crafting a surprising and thought-provoking visual experience.

Cris Devil aims to immerse the viewer in his artistic universe—a world filled with irony, fantasy, and irreverence—offering an escape from the often alienating reality of everyday life. Through his compositions, he draws attention to pressing global issues, such as water scarcity and pollution. To bring his creations to life, the artist employs a wide range of artistic mediums, including 3D graphics, photography, collage, acrylic paints, spray cans, and resin, all masterfully applied onto metallic supports. This diverse approach enhances the allure and uniqueness of his works. Cris Devil can aptly be described as a “Phygital” artist (Physical + Digital), creating both physical artworks and NFTs. In their digital form, his compositions come to life, inviting the viewer to dive even faster into the artist’s neo-pop-surrealist universe. Animation adds an additional layer of meaning, completing the stillness of traditional art. Today, the physical and digital worlds in art, as in everyday life, are increasingly intertwined.

ANGELO ACCARDI

Angelo Accardi is a renowned Italian artist born in 1964 in Sapri, in the province of Salerno. After a brief period at the Academy of Fine Arts in Napoli, he opened his own studio in the early 1990s. His early artistic endeavors were characterized by an obsessive focus on the human figure, which he soon began to distort, giving it a more dreamlike and symbolic dimension. This transformation was influenced by his exposure to abstraction and the works of artists like Emilio Vedova and Alberto Burri, whose expressive energy would become a vital source of inspiration for his work. Towards the late 1980s, he devoted himself intensely to marble sculpture, rediscovering his passion for classical Greek and Roman art. Throughout his artistic journey, Accardi has been in constant pursuit of new sensations. He employs mixed techniques to depict figures in various social contexts. His artistic research focuses on figurative representation with a social backdrop, exploring hidden human emotions. His works feature magical urban landscapes and interiors, born from a sophisticated system of painting and vision that captivates and surprises viewers. Over the past three decades, Angelo Accardi’s artistic trajectory has taken an exciting turn, leading him to explore social representations in collections such as Misplaced, Human Collection, and Blend. These collections serve as windows into the contradictions inherent in everyday life, using common objects and settings to create scenes that resonate with the viewer. Through a nuanced blend of humor, symbolism, and homage to artistic predecessors, Accardi captures the essence of culture, history, and even offers glimpses into the future.

ANDREA VIZZINI

Andrea Vizzini is an expert in artistic techniques ranging from photography to computer art. He was one of the founders of the pre-Transavantgarde movement in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought both a conceptual approach and a return to painting. His early works were characterized by conceptualized paintings that used figuration in heterogeneous contexts. Alongside the main representatives of the historical nucleus of the new figuration of the 1970s, he contributed to the gradual implementation of this movement. After working with oil paints on canvas and wood, in 1974 he traveled to Paris and visited the Louvre. There, he was struck by the section of Greek statues and decided to dedicate himself to the representation of Greek mythology.

After experimenting with acrylic painting and collage, he explored various materials such as earth, iron, and light, and began using light forms almost reminiscent of Caravaggio’s style, which allowed for spatial depth and a very personal impact. Since 2000, he has expanded his language through the creation of sculptures and the exhibition of large paintings in public spaces. Some of his works are in the collection of the Farnesina. In 2008, he exhibited at the Beijing Biennale during the Olympic Games, and his works are included in the National Museum of Art’s collection. Fascinated by the architecture and impossible perspectives of Maurits Cornelis Escher, the artist organized a major exhibition on the theme “Eternal Places” at the Italian Cultural Institute in London. He completed the cycle The End of Art, which became the title of an exhibition at the Ravagnan Gallery in Venice. This exhibition took place in July 2017 during the 57th Biennale di Venezia, coinciding with Damien Hirst’s grand exhibition Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. He has been written about by major critics such as Achille Bonito Oliva, Luciano Caramel, Eugen Gomringer, Alberto Moravia, Leonardo Sciascia, Umberto Eco, and many others.

ANDREA CRESPI

lives and works in Milano. He graduated in Industrial Product Design from IED Milan. He began his career in the visual arts communication world as an Art Director. Andrea Crespi is an artist who loves to experiment through a constant exploration of different media, ranging from more physical, traditional ones like acrylics and oils, to digital mediums that led him to establish himself in the international crypto art scene with NFT works and being selected by the prestigious and historic curatorial platform SuperRare.

In 2022, he created the ARchivi installation, exhibited at the MAGA Contemporary Art Museum during the Archivi Futuri Festival, aiming to explain and renew the world of art through a new and innovative tool like augmented reality. In 2023, the first artist monograph was published in dual formats: digital (as an NFT) and print, by The NFT Magazine and curated by Sandie Zanini. It was presented during his solo exhibition Over The Lines at the Zanini Arte Gallery in the province of Mantua from May to September 2023. His digital works have been exhibited internationally during major events like Art Basel Miami, Art Basel Hong Kong, NFT NYC, and Art Dubai. Involved in numerous collaborations with renowned fashion brands such as Bvlgari, ETRO, ADIDAS, KAWASAKI, and OTB, he seizes every opportunity to support significant social causes, particularly in aid of children and women. In 2023, he collaborated with Bella Esperanza Charity to help build a school in Tanzania. In the same year, alongside the Dynamo Camp Foundation, he participated in an exhibition at the Triennale di Milano, presenting his reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s David at life-size and a digital NFT artwork mounted on SuperRare.