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Arcadja Artmagazine interviewed the gallerist Roberto Agnellini in Brescia in occasion of Mark Tobey’s exhibition.
The Galleria Agnellini opened only a year ago in Brescia, but made its debut in great style at MiArt 2008. Brescia and Milan are two very different realities, which give a different type of attention to the organisation of cultural events and also have different responses from the public. How did you develop the idea to open a gallery and why in Brescia? This city has always been considered culturally marginal compared to others, do you believe that recently Brescia has had an artistic and cultural redemption destined to grow and last in time?
Roberto Agnellini: I used to have another activity, I have always worked as a businessman in the iron and steel industry. Then, 4 years ago I worked with Vecchiato in Padua and we opened a gallery together, but afterwards, as we did not agree on our choices, we decided to go separate ways. Here there was Marchina, he was tired and wanted to give up his gallery, so I took over it and added also another space, which he did not use to have, giving life to this activity of mine. I’m from Brescia, I was lucky enough to find this space, that I arranged in the best way I thought. Clearly, all initiatives have to be contextualised, therefore in starting up an activity you cannot disregard the context which it takes place in. I have a personal concept: I think that a gallery is worth the things that it proposes and therefore any place is good, as long as the gallery carries out a rigorous job, proportioned to its own possibilities. Therefore, I believe that the place chosen to open a gallery is irrelevant, I think that places of art are such independently of where they are. Opening it in a livelier context for me is absolutely not synonym of quality, and we should also remember that Brescia, with regard to private galleries, is the third exhibition pole in Italy.
Andy Warhol, Jaques Villeglé, now Marc Tobey and soon at MiArt Rauschenberg. A year after the inauguration of the gallery we have seen proposals of well-established names in the international artistic panorama. They are definitely attractive initiatives. Do you think that even in future you will follow this tradition or are you planning to propose an even richer group of Italian artists? And what is your approach towards Eastern and Middle-Eastern art, which now seems to be experiencing a moment of glory?
R.A.: I think that a gallery has a well-defined role and that, therefore, it should have a potpourri of widely selected artists, otherwise it may fall into banality. It is clear that as I sell works I buy others and make plans. For instance, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Nuveau Realisme next year, I am thinking about organising an exhibition dedicated to this movement. I am getting ready, I already have some material, and I am negotiating with a very big international gallery which I can refer to, but I would prefer to do the exhibition with my own works, because the purpose of the gallery is also to be – safeguarding quality – a commercial and not only a cultural proposal. In particular, I believe that you should not fall in love with names, but with quality and falling in love with quality means not making brusque digressions, but holding on to what you have.
With regard to oriental art…I went to China with Vecchiato, we were among the first to import works by Chinese artists, but I believe that oriental art is 90% a speculative bubble, while 10% of it is represented by artists (such as Zhang Xiaogang among the Chinese and Goupta among the Indians) destined, in my opinion, to last in time. It is clear that this crisis has provoked a natural selection: if before we were used to going to auctions where there was everything…auction after auction a multiplier, now this no longer exists, it belongs to the book of dreams. Therefore, who has the ability to choose and buy works by artists that I consider valid, even if they paid a high price for them, in the end will be rewarded.
As a gallery manager you know very well the dynamics of the art market, but you are also familiar with art and its current trends. At the moment, in your opinion, to what extent is the market willing to follow artistic trends and instead to what extent does art second the market?
R.A.: That’s a good question, because art is one thing and the market another. The market, especially this market, was invented by the Americans and was shaped to their own image and resemblance. Therefore, this market has exalted values that often were not values. I remember in October when there were the auctions of contemporary art and the day after the two Italian sales: at the evening sale, the chief event, it seemed the day after…the total destruction, the day after at the Italian sale everything was sold. This means that values which grow with moderation, and that are consolidated in time, are always values while values that are fruit of speculation often have unexpected downturns, which sooner or later have to occur. I still feel a little like an apprentice wizard, but I believe that there are values even in art which are now consolidated. For instance, a work by Lucio Fontana, can cost more or less 100,000 €, but Lucio Fontana is a 20th century master who will definitely continue being a prestigious artist at international level. Perhaps there are other artists who have achieved very high quotations on the market but in my opinion they will not last in time.
In Italy there are a lot of art galleries, and many of them propose high-sounding names of artists who are very appreciated within the market. You aim at this artistic excellence too, but you make an accurate selection of these artists’ pieces, choosing even rare and unseen works, and you valorise them with the strong support of the critical and curatorial means. In your opinion how important is it to manifest the value of a work, not only under the merely commercial aspect? Is this formula, in which various channels are routed to make works stand out, a winning formula?
R.A.: I believe one thing: of all exhibitions what remains are the catalogues. If now you see an exhibition, in six months’ time you will see another one, but the evidence of the exhibition is the catalogue, therefore personally I believe that in a gallery the exhibition catalogue is an essential element, it is the image of the exhibition proposed, and so is the trusteeship. When there are scientific and rigorous communicative principles even a mediocre work becomes beautiful, not for a commercial aspect, but because there has to be an activity, even if it is not properly didactic but at least propaedeutic, that helps to understand works. There are important pieces and less important ones, but the gallery is not a museum, it does not do exhibitions with loaned works, but with pieces it owns. Therefore, it is clear that either it has infinite resources or it tries to propose with the greatest seriousness what it has, then it is up to the spectator to judge whether the proposal is interesting or not. It is a test which never ends. For instance, with the current exhibition dedicated to Tobey, I’ve had great satisfaction: one of the main Swiss collectors came just to see the exhibition and paid me many compliments, also for the brave choice of such an artist, often emarginated for his choices and forgotten, although he was a real 20th century master, an artist with a very interesting human side.
So, on these occasions, do you feel more like a businessman or an art lover?
R.A.: Without doubt an art lover. I would not be able to propose an exhibition that I do not like. The result would not be very convincing.
The current exhibition dedicated to Marc Tobey at your gallery has also been curated by Philippe Daverio. Is asking Daverio to curate the exhibition an attempt to bring the world of criticism closer to the system of the art market again? How did you plan this event with him, and where can we find Daverio’s mark, in your opinion, which distinguishes this exhibition from the previous ones?
R.A.: This exhibition has a particular history: most of these works used to belong to Philippe Daverio. He used to be a gallery manager, the paintings still bear on the back of them the label “Philippe Daverio Gallery, New York”. Daverio had bought them from Tobey’s secretary and had paid a fortune for them, then due to a series of circumstances he gave up being a gallery manager, he alienated this collection that I managed to retrieve and purchase. As Philippe and I have been friends for some time, we have always said to each other that the day I would have organised this exhibition he would have curated it. Daverio’s mark is clear right from the choice of the subject: Philippe is a bright madman, in the sense that only a bright madman in New York in 1990 could think of doing an exhibition on Marc Tobey, an artist that the Americans did not want to see. It was a cross-current decision. When I told him that I wanted to organise the exhibition dedicated to Marc Tobey he answered: “You are very brave, because from a commercial point of view I don’t know how it will go, from an artistic point of view it will be a very cultured exhibition and probably it will not be understood. However, as I am stubborn and obstinate, and I want to carry forward the things I like, I did it anyway.
“Marc Tobey poetically abstract” is the title of this anthological exhibition dedicated to the US artist, renowned also for his spiritual as well as artistic life. Among these works do you think that there is one that is vital to this exhibition, a key piece without which this event would not be so interesting? If yes which and why?
R.A.: I believe that there is more than one. The exhibition follows a chronologic order, starting from figurative art with paintings of post-impressionist, Matissian imprint, then it proceeds with the jazz period and afterwards with the more mystic one. I find extraordinary “Figurative drawings”, ink and tempera on paper, which mark the passage from figuration to this white sign, personally I find it a beautiful work because it is like a photo of Tobey’s artistic development and therefore it is a work which represents another way of proposing signs, and this result is what made the artist become famous. Then there are extraordinary works that are examples of his white writing and some works that represent his religious development, executed in 1957 in Japan when he went to a Zen monastery and learnt a lot from oriental painting. I believe that it is a compendium of works that fit well together, it is difficult to say which is the most representative in such an important and variegated journey. The real Tobey is the one of the works from the sixties, in which small signs are diligently overlaid on top of each other, creating a particular visual effect. People are often attracted also by the blazes, the gleams, the colours, but often the colours do not represent the artist’s true essence. There are also three interesting hand-painted glass windows, the only ones realised by the artist, which close the exhibition. I have pointed out more than one work and, as an art lover, personally I find in these pieces a sort of lyricism and poetry that is beautiful. An exhibition should be in a way the cross section of an artist and therefore it should represent him or her with as many works as possible and be able to interpret in the best possible way all of his or her life. I have tried to do this with the means I have and it seems to me that, from the compliments and the contribution from Tobey’s archive, the public’s response is positive.
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