The art exhibition titled Marcopolo Travels - Visioni d'Arte was held at Palazzo Toaldi-Capra in Schio recently. It was curated and organised by Roberto Settin, who represents different artists and organises public exhibitions to sell their works.
This year is the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian merchant-traveller Marco Polo and thus different events have been organised in Italy on the theme of travel and journeys, especially in the Veneto region. It was also the theme of the art-exhibition of Visioni d'Arte.
Roberto Settin and his agency Visioni d'Arte
I had a brief talk with Roberto at the exhibition. He started this agency Visioni d'Arte in Bassano del Grappa during the shut-downs due to the Covid epidemic. He felt that he knew about the artists, the way the art markets work and has the international connections, so he can help artists to have viable strategies for selling their works.
To explain, how he can help artists, he gave the example of understanding the value of the art. He said that sometimes, new artists have unrealistic expectations about the kind of money they can get for their work and he helps them to have more realistic ideas. Often new artists can just manage to cover the cost of their materials and gain a small margin. Having their names and works in an exhibition-catalogue increases the value of their work over time.
To present their art-works in such an event, the artists need to contribute to the costs of organising the exhibition. For an exhibition in a small town like Schio, the costs are much less, compared to exhibitions in big towns like Venice or Milan. At the same time, small towns have lesser visitors and less sales.
Roberto is also an artist. He explained that the orange lion placed outside the exhibition hall was his creation. Roberto can be contacted through his Facebook page.
Art-Works in the Exhibition
The art-works in the exhibition were on different themes and many were not directly about travel, unless we think of travel as flights of fantasy and imagination. I want to briefly mention a few art-works from this exhibition, which I liked.
Let me start with 2 oil paintings using spatula - Rose in black and white by Annalisa Trento and In flight by Bianca Mengotti.
Marco Eracli, an artist based in Florence, had 4 works in the exhibition, using acrylic with mixed techniques, that gives a wonderful texture to his work. Among all of them, I liked most the art-work titled Star-dust. Carlotta Castelletti also used acrylic but she used the wall-paper fabric for her striking work titled Madam.
Antonio Miatto does sculptures and collages. Among his works, I liked his collage titled "The Sea" and the wood-metal sculpture of the fish with a hole, titled "Without a heart".
I liked the 3 oil-on-canvass paintings - 2 of them by Mara Zanchetta - "Freedom" with its red and black colour scheme and "Hair-curlers" with a feisty looking woman. The third one was "Hathor" by Monia Sansa.
The mixed material work by Cristiano Sandonà, uses some synthetic resin materials mixed with acrylic on glass - his work titled "For You" was simple and evocative. I also liked the mixed material work with wood and other recovered materials titled "Diversity is not the enemy" by Mattia Tegon.
Conclusions
I feel that art is very subjective, even more so, when the artists vary so much in their subjects, techniques and materials. Thus, deciding awards or who is the best, does not make sense to me.
Another aspect is liking some art-work at an intellectual level. It is another thing to decide which art-work I would like in my room, so that I can look at it daily.
From this point of view, I think that I would like the works of 3 women artists on my wall in my room - Bianca Mengotti, Carlotta Castelletti and Monia Sansa. At an intellectual and aesthetic level, I also like the works of Marco Eracli and Mara Zanchetta.
Among the art-works presented here, which ones do you like most? Write in the comments below.
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