The contemporary Italian art market is booming.
The worlds of fashion and art have long overlapped: leading designers keep upping their art holdings while collectors don Fendi and Armani togs.
But there's a new frisson to the pairing. Italy, home to many of those designers, commands a central position on the global art shopping circuit.
The latest sign of this is Christie's launch of a new Italian headquarters in the fashion-central city of Milan, steps away from La Scala.
Heading the office is Clarice Pecori-Giraldi, 44, a dyed-in-the-wool, Prada-bag-toting fashionista.
Creative endeavour
Most recently, she was in charge of communications for Prada and Ferragamo, though she began her professional life as a modern art expert in Christie's previous Milan office — where scrutinising works by De Chirico, Paladino and Fontana was a daily task.
"Fashion is a creative endeavour just like art," she says.
But there are deeper links. "Approximately 40 per cent of the private buyers at the top are in the fashion world in some manner," says Mariolina Bassetti, Christie's director and head of modern and contemporary art in Italy, who is based in Rome.
So Fendi, Prada, Valentino and Etro family members — as well as those from the vast cotton, silk, wool and leather industries — are some of the names peppering their contacts books.
Shift to fashion
"It's the new way to invest," she says. "In the 1960s, collectors came from the world of cinema but now in Italy there's been a shift to fashion."
Both Bassetti and Pecori-Giraldi substantiate the importance of Milan for collectors by pointing to Christie's sale last year of Arturo Martini's 1941 marble sculpture, 'Woman Swimming Under Water', for a stupendous £1.6 million (about Dh11.93 million) — the most expensive work of modern art sold at auction in Italy.
The auction house has zeroed in on two floors of an arcaded 15th-century building that once served as a Medici family bank. Its new saleroom is in the Palazzo Clerici ballroom while exhibitions and receptions will take place in the Tiepolo Gallery that boasts allegorical frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo from 1740.
This kind of focus in Milan is not new. Sotheby's staked out a presence in the city more than 30 years ago when it held its first regular sale at the Palazzo Broggi; Christie's first sale was in 1993. But it is a sign that the contemporary Italian art market is booming.
Booming market
As London draws a more international crowd of buyers, the auction houses have been holding their big modern Italian art sales there. Last October, Sotheby's London sales of Italian art generated £9.7 million, (about Dh72.37 million) nearly double the amount of five years ago.
A glance at the catalogues for Sotheby's and Christie's 20th-century Italian art sales in London on October 16 — cleverly coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair, when lots of European and American collectors are in town — shows works from Giorgio Morandi and Lucio Fontana, who are among the most collectable names. Another market shift has been taking place: it is no longer only Italians who are clamouring for Italian art.
Modern art
Olivier Camu, Christie's international director and co-head of impressionist and modern art, London, who is leading the sale, says: "At our first modern Italian art sale in 2000, 55 per cent of the work went back to Italy."
Last year, that figure slumped to 40 per cent, with Americans, British and Asians taking home the bulk of the lots.
Prices are driving many collectors to Italian painting. "Much of 20th-century Italian art is undervalued and a relative bargain compared with American modern masters," says Camu.
For example, he says, you can pick up a major Alberto Burri for a fraction of the cost of a Robert Rauschenberg. The top price for Rauschenberg stands at $40 million (about Dh146.9 million) while a Burri can sell around the comparatively low $1 million (about Dh3.67 million) mark. The 1953 Burri that is on the block at Christie's, composed of burlap sacks cobbled together with varnish and paint on canvas, is forecast to fetch £450,000-£650,000 (between Dh3.35 million and Dh4.84 million). Sotheby's is headlining Fontana in its sale.
Demand on the rise
His 1961 Concetto Spaziale, Attese consists of four severe slashes on a white-painted canvas and carries an estimate of £350,000-£450,000 (Dh2.61-Dh3.35 million).
"Five years ago, this picture would have gone for, tops, £200,000 (about Dh1.49 million)," says Isabelle Paagman, Sotheby's London-based specialist.
Even the market for Fontana's terracottas, once considered marginal, has expanded. "Because of the jump in value for Fontana and other artists, we're seeing more clients from the financial world demanding Italian paintings," says Paagman.
She has seen the number of American buyers and under bidders jump twice in number within the past three years. Twentieth-century Italian art is also receiving a boost in the museum world.
Manhattan's Guggenheim is hosting the first big exhibition devoted to Lucio Fontana in almost 30 years — Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York — after it debuted at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice during the summer. And architect Zaha Hadid is turning her hand to the MAXXI: National Centre of Contemporary Arts, scheduled to open in Rome in 2008.
