The BA explores the transformation of contemporary art practices, connecting art with different areas of the production and social contexts. Relating to the dynamics and values of the contemporary art system, the programme reinterprets and expands the traditional academic approach to painting and visual arts, guiding students through experimentation, investigating a variety of environments, techniques and methods, which will support them in developing an individual way of expressing themselves and their personal artistic ideas.
Over the BA, students will have the opportunity to:
The programme enables students to acquire basic knowledge and skills in the field and to undertake a specialising path in the subject of interest through a project-based and experiential didactic approach.
After the first year, students choose their specialisation, with specific and elective courses during the second and the third year and a last specialised semester.
FIRST YEAR
Introduces students to the basic tools to approach knowledge and production of contemporary artistic practices.
Students analyse modern and contemporary artistic researches and experience various techniques of representation and visual languages, through theoretical, project-based and lab teachings of artistic anatomy, history of modern art, painting techniques, visual arts, drawing, phenomenology of contemporary arts, painting, photography, as well as through meetings with art system professionals.
SECOND YEAR
Guides students towards further improvement in the field by choosing one of the programme specialisations (Painting, Visual Arts) and through specialising studies in history of contemporary art, visual arts, visual arts techniques and technologies, public art, aesthetics, painting, video installations, sculpture.
Led by teachers through practical experiences, students learn how to manage theoretical, technical, formal and content features of an art project, and how to deal with languages and tools required to enter the world of contemporary art.
THIRD YEAR
Defines students knowledge and skills and provide the opportunity to deepen their personal researches, to relate with different design and exhibition methods and to know the latest trends in contemporary art, visual representation and exhibition practice starting from the idea of artwork and display.
By the end of the programme, students develop a personal method and language through specialising teachings of history of contemporary art, visual arts, painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video installations, cultural anthropology and didactic activities related to the thesis project, in its theoretical and project-based components.
Department: Visual Arts
Area: Visual Arts
Title Awarded: First Level Academic Degree
Credits: 180 CFA
Starting: February 2025 - October 2025
Duration: 3 years
Languages: Italian and English
Campus: Milan and Rome
Specialisations: your academic career
It widen students' knowledge of pictorial language through an analysis of its main consistent elements and of the latest new pictorial scene, in order to model their personal research.
The Painting course deepens the understanding of the medium and its language and how it is used within the field of contemporary art today. More than a mere skill, painting gets approached as a complex process, taking into account its long and rich history as well as its various possible implications with the present context, from theoretical to practical, from social to metaphorical.
Students have the opportunity to contextualise and align their personal expressivity with forms of contemporary visual representation and its theoretical and critical premises, and to acquire theoretical and practical tools that help students to produce, exhibit, write and express themselves through the language of painting.
Through experimental laboratories, it focuses on the methods, models and practices to create the exhibition space and to understand the latest trends within the world of contemporary art.
The Visual Arts course departs from the acknowledgement of the coexistence of a multitude of creative approaches and expressive forms within the field of contemporary art today and provides an insight on the systemic approach necessary to develop complex works, ideas and projects.
Art becomes a method and a mode of thinking and doing, set in motion through various forms of practice and theory, at the service of a personal expressivity and vision.
In a constant interdisciplinary dialogue through theoretical and hands-on experiences, students have the possibility to explore creative, artistic, critical and/or curatorial strategies that will help them to work as an artist, an art critic, a curator and various operative figures within the art system.
Our Faculty
Marco Scotini is the Artistic Director of the FM Centre for Contemporary Art, Milan, and Head of the Exhibitions Programme at PAV, Parco Arte Vivente, Turin. He is the Scientific Director of the Archivio Gianni Colombo and the Bert Theis Archive. He has been a member of the Italian Council since 2019. He has been Visual Arts Department Head since 2004. After many collaborations with international artistic institutions (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Documenta, Kassel, MAXXI, Rome, SALT, Istanbul, Castello di Rivoli), he curated the Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), co-curated the 1st Anren Biennale (2017) and he has been the Artistic Director of the 2nd Yinchuan Biennale in China (2018). Among his most recent publications: Utopian Display. Geopolitical Curating (Quodlibet NABA Insights, 2019), Politiques de la Végétation (Eterotopia France, 2019), Artecrazia (DeriveApprodi, 2017).
Andris Brinkmanis is an art critic and curator of Latvian origin, based in Milan and Venice. He has collaborated with magazines and publications such as Il Corriere della Sera, Alfabeta2, Arte e Critica, Flash Art International, Studija, and he is the International Editor of the bookzine No Order. Art in a Post-Fordist Society. From 2007 to 2013 he was commissioner and co-curator of Latvia, Estonia and Central Asia Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Among the most recent projects, he was part of the curatorial team of Documenta 14 (2017), 2nd Yinchuan Biennale (2018) and has curated Infancy and History at the OCAT Institute, Beijing (2019). Lecturer in NABA since 2009, he has been Course Leader of the BA in Painting and Visual Arts since 2013. His research focuses on alternative education and the relationship between education and visual culture.
She has a PhD in Contemporary Art History from the Catholic University, Milan, focused on the analysis of performative practices in the artistic field with reference to the role of women artists and gender approach. Since 2012 she has been a professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at NABA. She has held courses at the Catholic University, Brescia; seminars at the Sapienza University; Universities of Ferrara, Turin and Bari; at Artistic Institutions such as Palazzo Reale, MACRO, FMCCA. She has published essays with Routledge, Franco Angeli, Postmediabooks, research papers with Palinsesti and Comunicazioni Sociali and collaborates with Arte e Critica, Titolo, Opera Viva, Espoarte, Telescope. She is currently Course Leader of the BA in Painting and Visual Arts and of the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA Campus in Rome.
NABA provides students with the opportunity to study abroad as part of their academic experience.
NABA Academic Coordination Office, in charge for the management of the exchange programmes, supports students in taking advantage of the international study opportunities through exchange programmes and promoting educational experiences thanks to a network including numerous prestigious international partner universities.
NABA counts more than 70 cooperation agreements with academies and universities through the Erasmus+ Programme in Europe and others international cooperation agreements with several universities outside Europe.
NABA has developed strong relationships with leading associations, galleries and institutions that provide internships for NABA students, including Art for the World Europa, Fondazione La Triennale di Milano, A12 Associati, Fondazione Museion—Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Bolzano, Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Prometeogallery, Galleria Alessandro de March, Form Content (London), BAK—basis voor actuele kunst, O’Associazione, Arabeschi di Latte, Supportico Lopez (Berlin), Fondazione lettera27 Onlus, Oliviero Toscani Studio, Massimo Carasi, Sotheby’s Italia, Skira Editore, Fondazione Giuliani per l’Arte Contemporanea, Associazione Viafarini, Artshow Edizioni sas di Ciavoliello Giulio & C., Careof Organization for Contemporary Art, Gruppo Cimbali, and Associazione Culturale a.titolo.
Continue your academic career:
Kick-off your career. Among the career opportunities: