In the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, where the ghosts of Etruscan civilization and Renaissance humanism still whisper through olive groves, the Chianciano Biennale 2026 unfolds as a quiet yet potent counterpoint to the cacophony of our age. From 15 to 29 August, the historic town of Chianciano Terme and its Art Museum host an international gathering of contemporary voices—some 300 artists strong—spanning painting, sculpture, digital media, and installation. Amid this vibrant convergence of global creativity, one work stands out with particular urgency: Marita Vollborn’s bronze sculpture ARES. Selected as a featured piece by the German artist, it does not merely decorate the exhibition; it interrogates it, and by extension, us.
Vollborn, born in 1965 in Erfurt in the former GDR, carries the weight of history in her very biography. Growing up under a regime that policed thought and expression, she witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989—a moment of fragile hope that her later journalistic work would often scrutinize for its unfulfilled promises. A trained agricultural engineer and accomplished investigative journalist, she exposed corruption across science, politics, and industry before turning, around 2010, to sculpture as her primary medium. Her project Sinn und Scherben® (“Sense and Shards”) comprises some fifty expressive figurative works in clay and bronze that probe the fractures of the human condition: strength and vulnerability, power and guilt, joy and despair. ARES, created in 2015 and now cast in bronze (a limited edition), emerges from this series as perhaps its most politically incisive statement.
The sculpture depicts the Greek god of war—bloodthirsty, merciless, insatiable. Vollborn’s rendering is no neoclassical idealization; it is raw, visceral, and unflinching. The figure embodies obsession with violence and destruction, leaving suffering in its wake. As the artist herself has noted, the more than 80 million deaths of the two World Wars have proven insufficient to halt the arms race or the incitement to conflict. In bronze, ARES feels both ancient and alarmingly contemporary: a god who knows no restraint, perpetually seeking new victims. Its compact yet powerful dimensions (approximately 34 x 29 x 30 cm) concentrate an immense moral charge, inviting the viewer into an intimate yet confrontational encounter.
In today’s world, ARES resonates with devastating clarity. We inhabit an era defined by hybrid wars, proxy conflicts, cyber-aggression, and the relentless commodification of violence. Geopolitical tensions—from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and beyond—remind us that the god of war has never truly been dethroned; he has merely updated his arsenal. Profiteering from conflict, the militarization of politics, and the normalization of aggression through media and technology form the backdrop against which Vollborn’s sculpture operates. It is not a work of despair, however, but of indictment and, crucially, of dialogue. “Art must not shy away from difficult truths,” Vollborn has stated. “ARES is my response to a world still plagued by war and greed. Through sculpture, I hope to spark dialogue and remind us of our shared humanity.”
The choice of bronze is significant. This most classical of materials, associated with monuments to heroes and emperors, is here subverted to memorialize not glory but its antithesis—the moral bankruptcy of unchecked power. Vollborn’s figurative style, often fragmented and emotionally charged, renders the god not as an untouchable deity but as a mirror to human ambivalence. In ARES, we see our own complicity: the ease with which societies slide into cycles of destruction, the seductive logic of “necessary” violence, the greed that fuels it all. The sculpture’s outdoor suitability further amplifies its message; placed in the open, it confronts the elements—and by extension, the public sphere—much as war intrudes upon everyday life.
At the Chianciano Biennale 2026, ARES finds an ideal context. The event, now in its ninth edition, celebrates contemporary art in a setting steeped in layered histories: Roman thermal baths, medieval streets, and a landscape that has inspired artists for centuries. Tuscany has long been a crucible for reflections on humanism, power, and the fragility of civilization—from Dante’s infernos to Machiavelli’s realpolitik. Presenting ARES here creates a powerful dialectic. The biennale’s embrace of diverse media, including digital and installation works, underscores sculpture’s enduring capacity for tactile, bodily presence in an increasingly virtual world. Vollborn’s piece, alongside her explorations of German reunification through the ZEITGEIST91 project (extended into NFTs), bridges traditional craft with contemporary concerns, reminding us that the shards of history continue to cut.
Yet the sculpture’s significance transcends the exhibition. In a time when cultural discourse often favors irony, detachment, or algorithmic ephemerality, Vollborn offers something rarer: moral seriousness without didacticism. ARES does not preach; it provokes. It demands that we look—not glance—at the persistence of war in the human psyche. As global rearmament accelerates and authoritarian impulses resurface, the work serves as a timely memento mori for our illusions of progress. It echoes Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, gazing upon the ruins, yet rooted firmly in the material weight of bronze rather than ethereal critique.
Marita Vollborn’s ARES thus arrives not as a relic of 2015 but as a prophecy fulfilled. In the serene setting of Chianciano, it disrupts complacency, inviting visitors—artists, collectors, and thinkers alike—to reckon with the god who still walks among us. In doing so, it reaffirms sculpture’s ancient power: to make the invisible visible, the eternal urgent, and the monstrous all too human. One leaves the encounter not soothed, but awakened—precisely the role great art must play in turbulent times.
