Fairs, galleries, OFF circuits, temporary exhibitions, festivals, biennials, white art nights, non-profit spaces, residencies, studio visits, artist-run spaces, private foundations, museums (few, at least in Italy, the ones dedicated to strictly contemporary art) and collector patrons, but also Instagram, blockchains and even, in recent years, the metaverse. In this jungle of designated channels, which is the most effective one to make emerging artistic research germinate by attracting support and visibility? And again, can the transits from one circuit to another be considered the crucial moments of an initiatory path towards success, which among young artists will reward those who are most skilled in choosing the right strategies? In the golden and glamorous art world, it is known that considerable capital circulates, the concentration of which creates inevitable monopolies that jeopardize the survival of small research galleries, for which the risk of not meeting the market in the medium term is increasingly unsustainable. These precious incubators, without which Italy would probably be just a receptor of trends developed elsewhere, have their opportunity for maximum visibility in the Emergent or New Entries sections of the fairs, where they are often invited by the curators themselves.
Antonio Menon, President THE BANK ETS Foundation – Institute for Studies on Contemporary Painting. Photo Tommy Ilai & Camilla M.
From that moment on, gallery owners and their artists begin to be monitored by the international public of collectors, attentive to their subsequent moves to enter the system at least as much as to the quality of the artistic proposal and its peculiarity. Without adequate assets to cover, for a small business such as a gallery that does scouting, this observation phase (increasingly demanding as the peak seems to get closer) cannot last too long, under penalty of bankruptcy or a retreat to less authentic proposals. The widespread suffering of this type of gallery, many of which fail to reach the milestone of ten years of activity while maintaining the integrity of their approach, also makes the artists associated with them extremely vulnerable, who risk finding themselves at any moment again in the search for a channel structured from a commercial point of view, perhaps in an age group that almost precludes them from accessing support initiatives for “young” artists, typically reserved for those under 35. It is clear that in a system organized in this way, especially in a country like Italy where public funding for artistic research is increasingly undersized, the prevalence of the investment logic seriously jeopardizes the vitality of what, if helped to germinate, could be invaluable resources for our visual culture, as well as for our economy.
THE BANK ETS Foundation, view of the headquarters in Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza)
The activity of THE BANKETS Foundation – Institute for Studies on Contemporary Painting in Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza), a research and specialist center dedicated exclusively to contemporary painting, stands in sharp contrast to this in many ways ruthless mechanism. It was established in 2023 by the collector Antonio Menon, its president, who is supported by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, general secretary, and Paolo Zanatta, curator of the collections. The Foundation is a non-profit institution born as an emanation of the art collection of the same name, set up inside a former branch of Banca Commerciale Italiana. The spaces, transformed in 2019 into a private museum following a philological intervention of industrial archaeology, are now home to the Foundation and the newly established Museum of Contemporary Painting, which will be supported by a specialist library. The primary objectives of the institution are the dissemination of pictorial culture, through exhibitions, educational workshops and guided tours, and the support of younger talents, through constant scouting in research galleries and Academies to intercept the first frontier of painting at its birth. The collection, begun in 2000, acquired its most important corpus starting from 2012: it currently consists of over 1200 works representing approximately 360 artists and is continually expanding, thanks to a monthly purchase program.
Winning artworks of THE BANK Foundation Prize for Contemporary Painting 2024: Chiara Calore, “Blue dream”, 2024; Alessandro Giannì, “Untitled”, 2024; Davide Quartuccio, “Portrait of a blind man”, 2024, courtesy THE BANK ETS Foundation
What makes it exceptional compared to similar collections (already uncommon if financed by a single private individual) is the particular form of patronage it expresses: rejecting the prevailing logic of investment, according to which the decisive element is the prediction of which names could see the value of their works increase in a more or less rapid time, it is instead based on a direct relationship with the artists that takes no account of their strategic positioning. The works of painters who are not known personally and whose studios have not been frequented are rarely acquired, and the acquisition of the work is only one step of a long-term project aimed at facilitating their path, which includes the creation of documentary archives on the artists present in the collection and their promotion in Italy and abroad through a network of trusted galleries and institutions. This approach is so far removed from the rationale with which most of the collections from the last twenty years have been composed (in which the relationship with the work seems secondary to the calculation of context and perspectives) that it seems almost utopian at first glance, if one did not consider that the great twentieth-century collecting was based precisely on these values. In line with this attitude, the imprint of the collection could also be defined as humanistic, due to the centrality of the human being understood in his multifaceted complexity as the driving force of the research of the artists represented, with a marked predilection for portraiture, far more prevalent than landscapes and still lifes.
Sergio Padovani, “La strada perduta”, 2024, oil, bitumen and resin on canvas, 230 x 160 cm; Federico Guida, “La mia prima Croce”, 2019-2021, oil on linen canvas applied on wood, 238 x 180 x 5 cm, courtesy THE BANK ETS Foundation
This orientation is evident in the recent acquisitions linked to the second edition of THE BANK Foundation Prize for contemporary painting, offered at ArtVerona (11-13 October 2024), which saw Chiara Calore (Galleria Giovanni Bonelli) Alessandro Giannì (Nicola Pedana Arte Contemporanea) and Davide Quartucci (Boccanera Gallery) win in a triple ex aequo. The Foundation’s programming of activities will continue from 24 October to 7 November 2024 with the exhibition “Federico Guida. Arbor”, curated by Mimmo di Marzio and set up inside the Church (former convent of San Potito in Naples) on the occasion of the fourth edition of Art Days – Napoli Campania. Subsequently, from 9 November 2024 to 25 March 2025, at the Foundation’s headquarters in Bassano del Grappa, a solo exhibition by Sergio Padovani spread over the two floors of the building and curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi will conclude the artist’s tour, started at the beginning of 2024 at the Museums of San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome and continued with stops in Modena (Complesso di San Paolo) and Paris (Galerie Schwab Beaubourg), with a new selection of works relating to the “Pandemonio” project created from 2018 to 2024. More long-term, among the objectives for 2025, a Salon d’Automne that will take inspiration from the concept of the Parisian event of the same name to present works by the youngest Italian artists in a very wide group show, with the hope that its effectiveness will be as decisive in consolidating their careers as the historic French salon was in bringing out, at the beginning of the 20th century, key figures of contemporary art such as Matisse, Gauguin and Cézanne.
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Graduated in art history at DAMS in Bologna, city where she continued to live and work, she specialized in Siena with Enrico Crispolti. Curious and attentive to the becoming of the contemporary, she believes in the power of art to make life more interesting and she loves to explore its latest trends through dialogue with artists, curators and gallery owners. She considers writing a form of reasoning and analysis that reconstructs the connection between the artist’s creative path and the surrounding context.
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