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January is the month of returning — to classrooms, desks, and knowledge. But it’s also the time when art meets education: when creativity leaves the gallery and intertwines with places of teaching, dialogue, and community.
In this “Back to School”, we retrace three Italian projects where contemporary visual language inhabits universities and schools, transforming façades, walls, and courtyards into spaces of learning and symbolic participation.
Tellas at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”
At the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, in the San Lorenzo district, Tellas created a mural titled La percezione del paesaggio (The Perception of the Landscape) on the walls of the Faculties of Medicine and Psychology.
The work reflects the dialogue between biology and psychology — disciplines that share the same space — through a grid that integrates with the architectural rhythm of the building (white and grey rectangular blocks), generating forms that reinterpret perception, vision, and landscape.
It is a powerful example of how art can become not just decoration, but a medium for reflection within academic life: a visual stimulus inside a place of knowledge.
As students return to university, this artwork invites them to look beyond — to perceive, interpret, and question.
Gonzalo Borondo at the University of Milan–Bicocca
Borondo, together with Edoardo Tresoldi, created Chained (2015) in front of the University of Milan–Bicocca: a fusion of painting and sculpture, metal mesh and brushstrokes, forming a grand visual metaphor about support, cooperation, and overcoming obstacles.
The wall becomes a lesson itself: overcoming barriers with the help of others, stepping beyond limits, transforming architecture into a space for thought. In an academic context, this intervention resonates as an invitation to share, collaborate, and build together.
For those returning to class in January, it serves as a reminder: education is not only the accumulation of knowledge — it is also sharing, collective growth, and mutual learning.
Orticanoodles in Legnano / Bologna
The collective Orticanoodles has developed projects in educational and urban contexts, transforming art and learning into shared experiences.
In Legnano, at the “Bonvesin de la Riva” school, they created the mural Oltre la vetta (Beyond the Summit, 15 × 10 m) as part of the “Attiva.Mente” project: a composition depicting an athlete surrounded by her supporting team, accompanied by Michael Jordan’s quote:
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
In an educational setting, the mural becomes a reflection on the values of community, collaboration, and inclusion.
Furthermore, in Bologna during the Cheap Festival 2017, Orticanoodles paid tribute to Irma Bandiera, a Bolognese partisan, transforming memory into public art. This project shows how art in schools can go beyond the classroom — embracing history, citizenship, and collective memory.
Resuming the Lesson
January is the month when notebooks reopen, when we sit once again before the blackboard, when classrooms come back to life. And if these spaces are enriched by artworks — like those of Tellas, Borondo, and Orticanoodles — education gains an additional dimension: visual, participatory, collective.
Art in educational settings is not mere ornamentation: it is dialogue, provocation, and a stimulus for critical thought. Within the walls of universities and schools, a new lesson is written — one of perception, community, and memory.
When we return to class, we don’t just return to study. We return to see, to interpret, to ask questions. Because education, too, is art.