The contemporary art market in Italy

The contemporary art market At the end of the 19th century, Italy lacked commercial structures, which is why Italian artists were forced to turn to Paris to establish relationships with merchants. The dealer they turned to was essentially Goupil, who, unlike Ruel, was not an avant-garde dealer, just as Italian painting was not avant-garde. At this stage, Italian painting was still characterized as very moderate, still traditional compared to the French avant-garde, focusing as it did on genre scenes from the Neapolitan and Roman schools. A new and important development was the organization, in 1895, of the First International Art Exhibition of the city of Venice, known as the Venice Biennale (which we will discuss in more detail later). Let us emphasize that on paper, it was an operation aimed at creating a new (Italian) hub for the contemporary art market, capable of initiating an international dialogue with the research of other countries, with which it aimed to engage. In truth, however, it was initially managed in an official and traditional manner and thus remained effectively closed to new trends, so much so that it provoked polemical reactions from young artists. Thus, here too, as in France, an exhibition of the "rejected" artists from the Biennale was held, again in Venice, but it did not materialize in the development of an original, cohesive, and energetic movement like Impressionism. In Italy, the most important gallery, active since 1870, was that of Luigi Pisani in Florence, which modeled itself on Goupil and worked with the Tuscan Macchiaioli (Fattori, Signorini, Banti, Lega). With the exception of the artist Medardo Rosso, an innovative sculptor, modernism in Italy began to emerge in the 1890s, with the Milanese Divisionists (Segantini, Pellizza da Volpedo, Morbelli), who gravitated around the Grubicy brothers' gallery. However, it is Futurism that is considered the first true Italian avant-garde movement. Futurism, founded by Marinetti (which we analyze here from the perspective of its sociocultural impact rather than its aesthetic and poetic content), is particularly distinguished by its organizational, promotional, and commercial strategies. From its international launch, through the publication of its Manifesto in the Parisian newspaper “Le Figaro” (1909), to its publicity through posters, flyers and so on, to the programming of exhibitions in various European countries: 1912 saw the debut of the Futurist painters in a well-known gallery in Paris, followed by exhibitions in London, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam. The cultural success of the operation was total: the Futurists managed, through these strategic actions, to insert themselves in a very short time into the most vital circuits of the international avant-garde (even influencing them, as in the case of the Russian Futurists and the English Vorticasts). The Sprovieri Gallery in Rome became the center of Futurist activity, with a very dynamic program, which included, in addition to the exhibition, a series of activities, such as conferences and concerts. Although the market achieved a certain level of development between the 1920s and 1930s, it failed to take on an international dimension in the galleries' activities, and this is fundamentally the reason why Italy was destined, at least up to a certain point, to remain rather marginal in the international contemporary art system. It is no coincidence that there are many examples of artists who moved to Paris: from Modigliani to De Chirico, Savinio, De Pisis, Campigli. One of the causes of this situation is probably the Venice Biennale itself, which exercised a sort of monopolistic control over sales (in fact, until the 1960s it directly managed the sales activity). In 1931, it was joined by the Rome Quadriennale, another important institution still active today, dedicated entirely to contemporary Italian art, which also handled the sale of the works. In the post-World War II era, around the 1950s, the situation began to gradually change, and with the rise of Art Informel, we witnessed a phenomenon of openness to the international scene. And it was in the 1960s and 1970s that this process reached full fruition: a series of avant-garde galleries, initially in Milan, began to present exhibitions of the most important international artists and emerging artists of the Italian avant-garde, which this time proved truly competitive in terms of innovation. We are talking about research linked to Pop Art (with Schifano, Festa, Angeli, Ceroli) and Conceptual Art (with Paolini) and Povera Art (with Kounellis, Pascali, Zorio, Anselmo, Merz). It was a very happy period for Italy, perhaps we could say the happiest in the history of contemporary art, because it succeeded in fully establishing itself on the international scene. The historic Roman galleries of this period are the Tartaruga by Plinio De Martiis, the Galleria La Salita, the Attico gallery by Sargentini, the very famous Turin gallery of Gian Enzo Sperone (connected with Leo Castelli of New York) and some Milanese galleries such as the Galleria Toselli, etc. The 1980s were marked by another enormous international artistic phenomenon: the Transavanguardia (Cucchi, Clemente, Chia, Paladino, and De Maria), which represented a return to painting. This return to the materialization of artworks on a painted surface (which affected not only Italy, but also other countries, particularly Germany and the United States) coincided with an unprecedented market development. Currently in Italy, Milan is probably the liveliest center of the market, while Turin is the most important city in terms of the quality of its cultural offering, being home to the most important museum of contemporary art in Italy (the Castello di Rivoli), and to important foundations such as the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.