Giant egg sculptures next to baroque still lifes, a satyr family between Pistoletto’s reflections: in the small port town of Monopoli, Italy’s gallery owners present an exciting journey through times and themes.
September is the start of the season for the art market. While Vienna relies on art fairs and the gallery festival curated by, the Italian art trade is taking a completely different approach. There, at the beginning of the art autumn, the summer is extended. Over 60 galleries attract artists, collectors and connoisseurs to an exhibition with a holiday feeling for four days at the beginning of September. The weekend is organized by the “Italics” network, which Pepi Marchetti Franchi (Gagosian Rome) and Lorenzo Fiaschi (Galleria Continua) founded in the Corona period of 2021. How can we stimulate the art scene, how can we make the art trade more visible, how can we create new sales incentives, they asked themselves at the time. Her answer: We have to work together and take action!
The highlight of the activities is the annual exhibition “Panorama” with works that come from the galleries’ program. Last year, Italics made a guest appearance with an art course on the southern Italian island of Procida, which is only around four kilometers long. This year the crème de la crème of Italy is meeting in the Apulian port town of Monopoli. Normans, Byzantines and Staufers, Spaniards, Habsburgs and Bourbons once ruled at the bottom of the boot. Almost 50,000 people live here today. A carefully restored, medieval town center full of winding streets, a sandy beach on the promenade, the impressive fortress of Charles V from the 16th century, a cathedral begun in the 12th century – and yet the Apulia hype has spared Monopoli so far. In this old town, which is well developed for tourism, more than 70 works of art are exhibited for a weekend, in inner courtyards, on squares and above all in churches and chapels.