ILLYCAFFÈ AND BARCOLANA PRESENTED BY GENERALI UNVEIL THE POSTER FOR THE 55TH EDITION, CREATED IN COLLABORATION WITH JUDY CHICAGO

TRIESTE, Italy, June 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Floral forms transform into billowing sails to celebrate the Barcolana sailing regatta, blending the beauty of the natural world with the power of art to craft an ever broader and more inclusive message.

After Michelangelo Pistoletto (2015), Gillo Dorfles (2016), Maurizio Galimberti (2017), Marina Abramović (2018), Olimpia Zagnoli (2019), Lorenzo Mattotti (2020), Ron Arad (2021) and Matteo Thun (2022), illycaffè, the artistic director for the Barcolana poster chose an exceptional artist, the American icon of feminist art Judy Chicago, to celebrate the 55th edition of the world's largest sailing regatta. This is a powerful choice, using art to further emphasize the event's commitment to women's empowerment.

Indeed, Judy Chicago has highlighted the regatta's dedication to inclusiveness and women's leadership, transforming into sails the color and forms that have been the hallmark of her work, and showing how art and sports can share the same goals of raising awareness and issuing a strong call-in support of women's role in society and inclusive sports.

"My entire career has centered on preventing the erasure of women's history and creating art with meaning. My collaboration with illy and the art created for Barcolana 2023 will hopefully illustrate that art can be a transformative media social change and intellectual growth. I am thrilled that illy shares this same vision with me" said artist Judy Chicago.

"We have once again decided to support the Barcolana, now in its 55th year, and to celebrate it with a poster designed by a renowned artist, a rite that for over twenty years has symbolized our deep ties with the art world" said Cristina Scocchia, CEO of illycaffè. "We have done this together with Judy Chicago, a feminist icon who has always believed in art as a tool for social and intellectual revolution. By transforming her petals into waves shaped by the wind, she reminds us of the importance of fighting for human rights, liberty, and women's emancipation, in sports and in all other sectors". 

"We are enchanted by the beauty and the force of the message created by Judy Chicago for Barcolana" commented Mitja Gialuz, President of the Sailing Club of Barcola and Grignano. "At this historical juncture - and as we participate in the Women in Sailing programme, we are implementing with Generali with the support of WorldSailing - to have a poster such as this one is an enormous resource and asset. We would like to thank illycaffè, who every year, through art, adds meaning, value, and vision to our work, showing how sports is a universal language".

Barcolana is scheduled for October 8^th 2023 in the Gulf of Trieste, with a starting time of 10:30, and will be preceded by a series of events both on land and at sea starting on September 29. Registration for the regatta begins online on June 14 at www.barcolana.it. Today, 400 posters and 4000 postcards with the image of the poster will be sent from the Sailing Club of Barcola and Grignano to the yacht clubs and shipowners who participated in previous editions.

Judy Chicago is one of the most influential artists of our century. Over the course of her six-decade career, social and environmental justice have been the driving force behind some of her most important projects as she continues to fight for equality in the art world for women and other marginalized artists and the protection of all living creatures. Over the years, male curators, and critics, who favored artwork created in the vein of the male-centered art historical canon, often overlooked her work. Rather than backing down, Chicago took on the challenge of changing these attitudes in the art world through the founding of the first Feminist Art Program at Fresno State, CA; the creation of her epic work, The Dinner Party, which sought to counter the erasure of women's history; and the development of a K-12 "Dinner Party" curriculum. In subsequent projects and bodies of work, she has addressed the prescient issues of birth and creation in the Birth Project, the construct of masculinity in PowerPlay, the horrors of genocide in the Holocaust Project, and most recently, the subject of mortality and its relation to the destruction of our planet in The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction. Chicago took the fashion world by storm with her collaboration with Dior and its creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for the Spring 2020 haute couture show in Paris. Chicago's career retrospective opened to rave reviews in August 2021 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In celebration of her retrospective, Chicago unveiled her largest atmosphere piece to date, Forever de Young, seen by more than 35,000 people worldwide. The author of fifteen books, Chicago wrote her definitive memoir, The Flowering, published in July 2021 by Thames & Hudson, now available in paperback, and cited as one of the best books of the year. The award-winning newsmagazine show CBS Sunday Morning recently profiled Chicago. Chicago will have a major exhibition, Judy Chicago: Herstory, at the New Museum in New York City in October 2023.

illycaffè is an Italian family-owned company, founded in Trieste in 1933 which has always set itself the mission of offering the best coffee to the world. It produces a unique 100% Arabica blend composed of 9 different ingredients. The company selects only 1% of the best Arabica beans in the world. Every day 8 million cups of illy coffee are served in over 140 countries around the globe, in the cafés, restaurants and hotels, in single-brand cafés and shops, at home and in the office, in which the company is present through subsidiaries and distributors.Since its foundation, illycaffè has oriented its strategies towards a sustainable business model, commitment that it strengthened in 2019 by adopting the status of Benefit Company and in 2021 becoming the first Italian coffee company to obtain the international B Corp certification. Since 2013 the company is also one of the World Most Ethical Companies. Everything that is "made in illy" is about beauty and art, the founding principles of the brand, starting from its logo, designed by artist James Rosenquist, up to illy Art Collection cups, decorated by over 125 international artists, or coffee machines designed by internationally renowned designers. With the aim of spreading the culture of quality to growers, baristas and coffee lovers, the company has developed its Università del Caffè which today holds courses in 25 countries around the world. In 2021, Rhône Capital became a minority shareholder of illycaffè with the aim of contributing to the company's international growth plans.In 2022, the company had 1230 employees and a turnover of €567,7 million. The illy single-brand network has 190 points of sale in 34 countries.

Barcolana is the largest sailing race in the world, held every year in Trieste on the second Sunday of October. Organised in partnership with the Municipality of Trieste, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, the main sponsor Generali and the support of numerous partners, the event saw in its 50th edition - held on Sunday 14 October 2018 - the presence of 2,869 registered boats, a new world record for a sailing regatta, which was followed by an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. The 50th anniversary edition brought more than 300,000 people to Trieste, confirming Barcolana as one of the most popular events in Italy, with a worldwide return in terms of image. In 2022, the regatta was won for the first time by a boat with a female skipper, the American Wendy Schmidt, who took part in the event with her boat 'Deep Blue' with the dual aim of promoting the role of women in sailing and raising awareness on the need to protect the environment. The 55th edition of the regatta will take place from 29 September to 8 October 2023 with the support, for the first time, of World Sailing, the international sailing federation, which with Barcolana promotes participation, inclusion and sustainability, as well as 'Women in Sailing', the project for the development of women's leadership through sailing inspired by the presenting partner Generali.

SOURCE illycaffè