Rome. Arcadia Auction House. Monday 20 June Street Art is the protagonist
Graffiti at the market test to coincide with Banksy's exhibition at Palazzo Cipolla. Famous street artists' names, but the identity of the owner is a mystery.
ROME - It will be Street Art that will be the protagonist, on Monday 20 June, of the evening auction of the Arcadia Auction House. Coinciding with Banksy's exhibition at Palazzo Cipolla, in fact, the young Auction House will propose at the Palazzo Celsi venue some works by well-known street artists including: Alice Pasquini, Mauro Pallotta, Diamond, Solo, Jerico, Mirco Marcacci, Mauro Sgarbi.
Anonymous, however, was the patron who brought some of the best-known young talents into the limelight, even abroad, and with whom Arcadia dealt in the strictest confidence.
Is it a gamble, a counter-current choice by the Auction House to propose this collection of Street Art? In reality, the intention is certainly not provocation, but rather the possibility of providing the collector with a key to interpreting a type of art that is so heterogeneous and complex that it is often difficult to fit into economic parameters. In fact, there is frequent controversy as to why it is too easy for so-called graffiti artists to go from giving away their works made on city walls, to then having them paid for profusely by gallery owners when made on other media.
The idea that Arcadia wants to focus on on 20 June is that of the double code of urban art: an art that was born underground and is therefore fast, athletic, bodily and caducous because it is exposed to the elements; but also an art that has evolved into various currents and styles, acquiring a qualitative exoskeleton that might be worth investing in as one does for the well-known names on the contemporary scene, which are and will always be equally present at auction. Urban art undoubtedly remains a public eye, be it on city walls, on objects or on canvas. The Street Art section of Arcadia Auction No. 3 is therefore not a provocation.
In the catalogue of Modern and Contemporary Art 150 lots including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and engravings by famous 20th century art exponents. It starts with Italian masters such as Giorgio De Chirico, Renato Guttuso, Giorgio Morandi, Ottone Rosai, and goes up to the 1990s.
These range from the formalism of Piero Dorazio, Giulio Turcato and Antonio Sanfilippo, to the Roman Pop Art of Tano Festa and Mario Schifano, and the heterogeneous Milanese trends of Enrico Baj and Roberto Crippa; There will also be important names in Arte Povera and Conceptual Art such as Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gino De Dominicis, as well as Vasarely's Optical Art; also of note is a hyper-contemporary section with a curatorial slant, with artists from the 1980s and 1990s such as Levini, Rainaldi and Pintaldi. There are also five historical shots by Claudio Abate, the acclaimed photographer of the Roman avant-garde, famous since the 1960s for his marked perception of space and his recurring choice of frontal viewpoint. Last but not least, the works of Salvatore Emblema, Omar Galliani and Andrè Masson, collected from a famous Roman collection acquired between the 1980s and 1990s by the historic gallery owner Cleto Polcina. Among the names of contemporary art also up for auction are Arman, Herman Nitsch, H.H Lim, Andy Warhol, Aligi Sassu and Arnaldo Pomodoro.
On the same day, from 3 p.m. onwards, there will be an afternoon auction of precious jewellery, whose catalogue (comprising some 270 specimens) is made even more captivating by the prestigious collection of American bijoux by cult jeweller Hobé, a family of master goldsmiths who in 1887 founded the eponymous brand that opened 40 years later in New York and later became famous with the Zigfield Follies. Hobé bijoux, created on commission to make women divine by wearing them at a reasonable cost, are splendid, often one-of-a-kind pieces, made of silver and low gold, with semi-precious stones of particular beauty, set by hand on models with a decidedly recognisable design and surrounded by delicate filigree motifs.
The exhibition will be open to the public from Wednesday 15 to Sunday 19 June, from 10 am to 8 pm.