Being Gian Paolo Barbieri

Interview by Luca Violo with Gian Paolo Barbieri
Photography is a magic moment. It is the memory of the past. It is an incredible cultural re-visitation that is difficult to specify since it is immediate and wholly visual. Also, if we look back into pre-history and cave drawings we see how Man found in the form of an image his first way to tell a story.

Foreigners everywhere. Adriano Pedrosa presents the 60th Venice Biennale Arte

The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.

A very Florentine adventure: or maybe not

by Luca Melegati, head of the Ceramics and Glass Department and Director of Milan
TThe birth of the association of the Amici di Doccia (Friends of Doccia), is due, but this is well known, to John Winter’s (1944 – 2014) determination, a personality, I believe, among the most interesting in the field of art commerce and, more generally, of the connoisseurship of the Short Century.

Pagani. The emotion of a dream

Interview by Luca Violo with Horacio Pagani, Founder & Chief Designer Pagani Automobili
Designing dream cars is both emotional and a great responsibility for us. We have to make sure that our creations ignite passion. We put love and dedication into our work, we use our skills that come from years of study and application.

Classic & Sports Cars. Freedom and beauty in movement

by Piero Evangelisti
According to sociologists and economists, the car ranks second, after our home, in the list of the most important things for a person and not so much as a means of transport – which remains fundamental for our freedom of movement – but, above all, for the emotions it convey(…)

El Greco. Venetian, universal and contemporary

byi Vittorio Sgarbi
El Greco there is a unique ability to overcome the barrier of time, any artist is in his canvases, even Pontormo, even Parmigianino, even the mannerists he felt like no other. El Greco lives as if time were not upon him (…)

ADI. The compass of taste

Interview with Giuseppe Finessi
The museum is not only a place that preserves works and valuable objects, but also a key player in doing research, and the result of this can only be that of sharing, and therefore, of dissemination.

Domus Tiberiana. Imago imperii

On 21 September 2023 the Colosseum Archaeological Park opened the Domus Tiberiana to the public, almost 50 years after the onset of the serious structural problems that had led to its closure and following important restoration interventions.

Miuccia Prada heads the Foundation

Miuccia Prada has formalized her role as Fondazione Prada’s Director and confirmed her personal commitment to present and future projects, as she has done in the last three decades.

Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Through art we know beauty

Today, the collection comprises more than 6000 objects including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, glass, weapons, gold, watches and textiles. For each collection, the museum holds extraordinary masterpieces, considered by critical literature to be the most important in the world. (…)

Fausto Melotti. Anti – sculpture with music and poetry

by Francesca Pola
The creative language of Fausto Melotti, one of the most important figures of European sculpture from the 1930’s onwards, developed into greater maturity in Milan between the two wars, a city in which abstract art and rationalist architecture (…)

Villa Necchi Campiglio and the original modernity

by Lucia Borromeo
Milan, Via Mozart 14: a historic address in the centre of one of the busiest cities in Europe. At this address, hidden right at the very heart of the metropolis and in the middle of a garden with a swimming pool and vegetable garden, lies Villa Necchi Campiglio, a house that was built between 1932 and 1935, by Piero Portaluppi.

Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo. Classically modern

The decision to collect for Paolo Tosio came after an exciting stay in Rome, a stop along with Florence and Naples on the artistic journey he made between 1807 and 1808 with his wife Paola Bergonzi. He only went there once, but that was enough to make him fall in love with ancient art and Raphael, but also with contemporary art, because it was in Rome that he got to know and frequent the circle of artists who were most avant-garde at the time.

Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. A house to live in

The people of Bologna, those who live in this city, must perceive the Pinacoteca as a place that belongs to them, not only because it is a public institution, but also because it preserves a collection closely linked to the territory, which tells its story through artistic documents of the highest quality from the 14th to the 19th century.

Fondazione Scuola Beni Attività Culturali. Today is already tomorrow

Our aim is to offer the national museum system as a whole new professionals, and at the same time to intuit what will be the professions of tomorrow, in the knowledge that different disciplines need to be networked. (…) The School wants to be the bearer of cultural values that go in this direction, that is, to dialogue, to connect, to relate what we considered distant until a few years ago. A mission that I believe is important.

Accademia Carrara. The House of Collectors

The Accademia Carrara’s holdings consist of 98% private bequests. Since its foundation, there have been more than 260 donors, with an admirable adherence to Giacomo Carrara’s project that has continued for more than two hundred years, and that has led to the identification of the Carrara with the “museum of collecting”.

TEFAF 2023. Art as infinite pleasure

To an art lover, getting lost in TEFAF is like being locked in a chocolate shop if you have a sweet tooth. A triumph of sensations that overlap one after the other until they stun you, make you intoxicated with shapes and colours. (…)

Notes from BRAFA 2023

Heterogeneous in its offer and renewed in its layout, the 68th edition of BRAFA in Brussels is open until 5 February 2023 in two welcoming halls of the Brussels Expo, an immense Art Deco exhibition complex inaugurated in 1935 for the Universal Exhibition. (…)

Benedetto Camerana. The future is now

Architect and President of the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Turin
As an architect, I have realised many projects for all kinds of buildings, such as public services, commercial, offices, churches, hospitals, spaces for sport and culture, but my most personal field remains architecture for the automobile (…)

Galleria dell’Accademia. A happy museum

Finally, every work in the museum has an identical light that enhances it, because I believe that all have the same right to be considered and admired by visitors; there can be no focus only on the best known works, which in the case of this museum is Michelangelo’s immense David (…)

Adriano Pedrosa appointed Curator of the Biennale Arte 2024

I am honored and humbled by this prestigious appointment, especially as the first Latin American to curate the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, and in fact the first one based in the Southern Hemisphere (…)

The recovery of the “Madonna and Child reading” by Andrea Solario

by Lavinia Galli, Conservator of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan
The delightful Madonna and Child Reading by Andrea Solario (documented from 1495-1524), which was restored by Paola Zanolini thanks to the generosity of Wannenes, is a happy recovery for several reasons..

Methodological notes for the restoration of the “Madonna and Child Reading” by Andrea Solario

by Paola Zanolini, restorer
The restoration of a board painting is always a complex intervention as it has to deal with different conservation issues: those involving the support, the pictorial layer, the gilding and even the frame.

For Mario Masenza the jewel is a work of art

In the post-war Rome was born a completely original creative project, whose aim is to encourage famous artists to work in the rare field of goldsmith.

Fontana Arte. The light of modernity

The peculiarity of Italian design is to have changed the perception of the industrial object from a craft product reproduced in a serial form, to ‘open form’ of creativity that evolves and becomes the image of an era and a taste.

Modigliani & Wahrol. The signs of modernity

In the next auction in Milan of Modern and Contemporary Art on…

The Atlantic Cruise Triptychs. A philatelic myth in flight

The Atlantic Decennial Cruise was organised by Italo Balbo in 1933 (…)

Paint the colors and signs of the imagination

The sale of Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings on May 18…

Gioacchino Assereto and dark naturalism

Gioacchino Assereto distinguished Genoese painting during the first half of the seventeenth…

Furnishing with eclectic imagination

In the next auction of Furniture, Sculptures and Art Objects to be…

Looted art. History restitution

by Giuseppe Calabi
The barbarity perpetrated in the Nazi era during the Second World War did not take place only …

Digital Art Warranties, Picasso and NFT

by Giuseppe Calabi
Until a few years ago, artworks and blockchain seemed to exist on two parallel lines

We need to restore our vision

by Tomaso Montanari
Art history is a historical subject and the so-called ruling class…

Clear ideas lead to clear words

by Tomaso Montanari
“Dear Professor, thank you for the interesting, compelling and moving program dedicated to Caravaggio

ESG. A dream for the markets

by Alessandro Secciani
To make the stock markets fly you need a dream.

Heritage: the future of a collection

by Giuseppe Calabi
The frontiers of collecting are endless. However, collections..