Matteo BERTELE'

Matteo Bertelé is Associate Professor in Contemporary Art History. In 2026, he obtained the National Academic Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) as a Full Professor of Art History.

He has been Marie Skłodowska-Curie global fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara, Universität Hamburg and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2018-2020), with the research project "GYSIART. A cultural history of comparative art practices and receptions in Cold War Europe (1945-1991)", agreement n. 750682. 

After obtaining a PhD at Ca' Foscari in 2011, he was post-doc research fellow and scientific secretary at the Center of Studies of Russian Art (CSAR), where he co-curated and coordinated exhibitions and edited volumes and catalogues of modern and contemporary Russian art. In 2020 he has been appointed deputy director of the same center.

At Ca’ Foscari, he was adjunct lecturer in Modern Art in Eastern Europe and History of Russian Art, teaching in both graduate and post-graduate classes (2015-2017). Since 2018, he is a committee member of the international PhD programme in “History of Arts” at Ca’ Foscari. Since 2022, he is Executive Director of the Summer School "Contemporary art and curatorship: from documenta to the Biennale" (Ca' Foscari University and Universität Kassel). 

He is director of the academic journal "Venezia Arti" for the Contemporary art section and a member of the editorial board of the journal "MDCCC 1800" (both indexed in Scopus), of the scientific committee of the book series “La prospettiva rovesciata/Obratnaja perspektiva”. He is member of the Advisory Board of the project "Mapping diaspora. Russian Art in Exile" (CSAR) and of the Scientific committee of the Archive Gregorio Sciltian (Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani).

He obtained research grants and fellowships from Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (2004); Ivane Javakhishvili State University, Tbilisi (2005); National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (2013); Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig (2017); Kunsthistorisches Institut - Max-Planck-Institut in Florence (2023). He is currently member of the collaborative research project “Bildwelten im Sozialismus” at Universität Hamburg; Project Researcher within the Project "On the Eve of Revolution. The East German Artist in the 1980s" at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and Associate Scholar at Kunsthistorisches Institut - Max-Planck-Institut in Florence.

He participated in international conferences held in Italy, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia. He was invited Guest Lecturer at (among others) Stroganov Academy, Moscow (2011; 2012), National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (2013); Zentrum Künste und Kulturtheorie, Universität Zürich (2014); Geistwissenschaftliches Zentrum für Geschichte und Kultur Ostmittel-Europas, Leipzig (2015); Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg (2017); University of California Berkeley (2019); Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome (2022); documenta Archiv, Kassel (2023); Università di Bologna (2024); Swiss Study Foundation (2024); Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw (2024).

His main research projects and publications deal with art exhibition and collection studies, artistic diasporas, Russian, Soviet and socialist art and visual culture, and the cultural dimension of the Cold War. He has published articles and essays in several international peer-reviewed journals and books, published in English, Russian, Italian, German, and French. He is the author of the monograph "Arte sovietica alla Biennale di Venezia (1924-1962)", 2020. He extensively contributed to the book "Russian Artists at the Venice Biennale 1895-2013 (2013)", awarded in 2013 as “Book of the Year” by the “Art Newspaper Russia” and nominated in the category “Theory, Art Critics and History” at the Innovation Prize, Moscow. His edited and co-edited books include “ZKK Rereading: La nuova arte sovietica: una prospettiva non ufficiale” (2014), the conference proceedings on Yuri Lotman and Pavel Florensky (both 2015) and the catalogue of the Russian Pavilion at the 57. Venice Biennale (2017).