The theme of the 2023 edition of the Acqua dell'Elba Arts Prize was "Transitions".

As in 2022, the 2023 edition shared its theme with SEIF, the Sea Essence International Festival. The aim of the Festival-Award combination was to encourage the public to think more deeply about the ways the sustainability of the marine ecosystem can be improved. Art, always attentive to the concept of "transition", was a great help in this respect.

Professor Maria Cristina Galli, deputy director of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, explained it very succinctly on this occasion: "The concept of transition belongs to art because of its constitutive principle. The ideas of passage, of crossing, of transmutation, of transformation, of rebirth, and therefore of creation in an absolute sense, are part of the artistic act, in its purest and most authentic intention. And it belongs to nature in the same way, in its most all-encompassing definition. Nature mutates, modifies, evolves, passes from one form to another, alters its "state" in sudden changes of phases, in a vital process in continuous movement.Consistent with these thematic premises, the twenty artists that took part in this stimulating seventh edition of the Acqua dell'Elba Arts Prize were set stringent conditions with priority given to works in which the restless emergence of an ultimate alternative reality and the possibility of starting to imagine the world again from this condition of existence was most evident".

The winners of the 2023 Acqua dell'Elba Arts Prize were Rebecca Gramolini with the "MURO BIANCO", Lorenzo d'Alba with "CARAPACE" and Vanessa Villa with "ANNOTAZIONE #5".

Given the high quality of the works submitted, the jury (consisting of the curator of the exhibition and of the Arts Prize, lecturer at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts Prof. Maria Cristina Galli, Francesco Conti as teaching assistant, artist Cristina Sammarco director of the Arts Prize for Acqua dell'Elba and the Acqua dell'Elba Foundation) also decided to award special mentions for the works of: Emanuele Caprioli, Silvia Cotugno, Alice Galizzi, Giorgio Lorefice, Arianna Pessina, Virginia Stevenin, Gloria Tamborini, Matteo Urbani, Chiara Vitali.

Their works, together with the pictorial, plastic and extra-media works of other young talents from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, were exhibited at the "Transitions" exhibition held from 3 to 9 July at the Telemaco Signorini Visual Arts Room in Portoferraio.

Watch the video of the presentation of the Acqua dell'Elba Arts Prize