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Salvatore Emblema on display in New York
Dear Friends and Collectors, Below is the press release for the upcoming exhibition at the Bosi Contemporary Gallery in New York. This is a gallery that has been operating successfully for several years in Manhattan's Lower East Side, the Big Apple's most vibrant cultural neighborhood. Its collaboration with gallerist Sandro Bosi is not recent. My family's and my appreciation for his work began with a strange but significant anecdote. I'd like to tell you about it briefly... It was 2007 and I was touring galleries in Rome. I came across two splendid works by Emblema in a window on Via Margutta. I entered, without revealing my identity, and asked the price. The gallery owner, after stating that he cared about those two works as if they were his own, told me: "It's a high price." I told him that that price seemed excessive, given the artist's current market situation. I objected that Emblema was selling for much less on TV and at auctions, and I didn't consider it a good investment (...actually, I was playing Devil's advocate). The gallery owner replied that he was giving those paintings the price he felt was fair, for an artist of undisputed historical value and with great prospects for appreciation. Therefore, he wouldn't go lower than a standard courtesy discount. He also added—but very tactfully—that if I didn't understand how important Emblema was, perhaps I'd be better off buying elsewhere, or elsewhere. I looked at him perplexed (and he was telling me that?). I left without another word and wished him good luck. That Roman gallery owner was Sandro Bosi, and soon he would open a new exhibition space in New York, adding to his existing bases in Rome, London, and Belgrade. But honestly, at the time, I never imagined we'd meet again. Instead, today, after officially introducing ourselves at the 2009 Biennale and collaborating on the restoration of those two magnificent canvases, which later went into his private collection, we are working together in New York. To inaugurate an exhibition of Emblema, which marks, after Los Angeles, the artist's definitive entry into the US market. Life is strange... but as my grandmother says, in the end, things that are meant to happen, happen. They're already talking about the exhibition on Wall Street International: http://www.wsimagazine.com/uk/diaries/agenda/arti/salvatore-emblema-transparency_20131031143949.html#.UnkEwXAyLDU .
Here are the top Italian galleries, according to Modern Painters
The top international galleries in Italy? There are eight. We're more or less there, and Italian participation in major global art fairs generally falls around this level. The question, if any, is "which" these eight supergalleries are, and here we abandon numerological certainties and enter the minefield of choice. This is being done, in these final summer days preceding the September resumption, by the English magazine Modern Painters, one of the firebrands of the Blouin group, which publishes the Artinfo portal, so to speak: and if you peruse the list, you'll find some great ones. Granted, in the summer the media give free rein to lighthearted writing, where relativism trumps objectivity and adherence to reality. Indeed, sometimes "exploding big stories" almost seems like an editorial choice, aimed at sparking debates that would otherwise remain confined to umbrellas dominated by gossip, at best political. But the options proposed for the Italian art scene seem curious, to say the least: even Artribune, by vocation, is always close to the work of young and enterprising galleries, but here they exclude recognized giants like Continua, Franco Noero, Alfonso Artiaco, or Massimo Minini... Exactly, the San Gimignano-based multinational doesn't even deserve consideration in the English list: and don't think it's been "recovered" among the French galleries, thanks to its location in Le Moulin. We checked, and it's not there (perhaps it will be cited as Chinese because of its Beijing location, but we couldn't find the Asian ranking). So, who are the top galleries according to the magazine? Brand New Gallery, Cardi Black Box, Monitor, Francesca Minini, Massimo De Carlo, Giò Marconi, Lia Rumma, Prometeo... Francesca Minini is there, but not her even more powerful father; Lia Rumma is there in Naples, but not Artiaco. In short, something to discuss in the final moments of summer. Do you agree with Modern Painters? Do you also think these are the eight best Italian galleries?