When and how did you open your gallery?
Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena, the two founding partners, began working together in the late 1990s. However, the first Robilant+Voena gallery opened in London in 2004. The idea has always been to introduce the public to works of unquestionable and outstanding quality, to mount exhibitions with great academic and scientific value. The initial segment focused on ancient art and more specifically on European Caravaggism. Over the years, there has also been a growing desire to broaden the spectrum of works, including everything from classical statuary to contemporary art.
The gallery’s common denominator is the pride of being Italian, which doesn’t necessarily have to be interpreted in political terms, but mostly in historical terms: Italy as a nation, and even before that as a peninsula, a geographical place, that for countless centuries has maintained an intellectual prowess over the rest of Europe; the legacy of the great men of the past who changed and innovated ways of thinking and acting; the historical testimonials that have come down to us, from architecture to poetry, music and art. Finally, we are convinced that art has always been contemporary: throughout history, the themes explored by great artists have always been the same, and while the final results may differ from one another, the ideas, questions and thirst for knowledge that underlie their creation are often the same, regardless of the span of time that separates them.
Your program: what kind of art do you deal in?
We deal with art in a broad sense. Clearly we have specialized skills that make us successful in our business; however, although we recognize the quality, value and fascination in a work, we are also brave enough to take risks, to study it in order to tell its story, to present it to the public in the best possible way and, finally, to find the right client. To answer this question, we specialize in Old European Art, 20th-century art and, specifically, post-World War II Italian art. In recent years, we have become more open to contemporary works, searching for an ongoing and solid dialogue between past and present. We’ve sold pieces to museums on every continent, and this makes us really proud of our work; we’ve brought works back from oblivion that were then made available to the community.
We take part in all the major art fairs, from Seoul to New York, London and Milan. We have organized exhibitions to promote 20th-century Italian art in Oman and South Korea.
What are the greatest challenges you find in your work?
We have multiple challenges on a daily basis. Not only us, but every gallery. Unfortunately, these challenges are not exclusively intellectual or creative, but more frequently of a practical nature: the costs that we have to bear to produce a valuable product, whether an exhibition or a catalogue, the purchase of a work or the study to discover its history, require considerable finances. This job is a challenging one by definition, since we can take nothing for granted and have to stay active: we have to hunt down the works we want to sell, and we’re the ones who search for the client who – if persuaded – will buy them. Running a gallery, working in the art world, earning a living through something beautiful produced by the human hand, is gratifying. However, very few people have any idea of the commitment required to achieve the desired goal, both in terms of energy and investment.
What are your predictions for the future of the art system in the sector you work in?
It’s hard to predict, given the plethora of dynamics influencing the global market. Geopolitical, macroeconomic, or anthropological developments can disrupt our industry; tastes themselves change over the course of time, and artistic movements or personalities that were admired in one certain moment in history – for whatever reasons – fall into oblivion, are viewed with distrust, only to reappear, to re-emerge, thanks to a concomitance of factors. Contemporary art is steeped in speculation. It speaks of today’s world and clearly has a great hold on the public; modern art, the art of the last century, is perceived as historicized – and therefore stable, in terms of both cultural and economic value – but still close to us, and so speaks to us, invites us to the kind of reflections that are still relevant; ancient art, on the other hand, is in decline. With regard to the latter, I would like to add that there are fewer and fewer quality works available on the market. All the factors to consider before making a purchase reduce the interested public, but the real cancer plaguing this segment is the incessant spread of ignorance.
How many young people today would hang a sacred subject, maybe a Madonna and Child, in their home? How many would hang a Deposition or a Lamentation over the Dead Christ? And yet, we know there is no lack of fascination in the history of Christianity or the Roman Church. Just as one cannot argue that – as Croce claimed – they did not shape Western thinking. The problem is that appreciating this kind of work often requires commitment and knowledge, the ability to deeply analyze an image and the message it conveys. But there is so much beauty in ancient art: it is history transformed into image, and it allows each of us to feel like part of a continuum.
How do you picture your gallery in ten years?
That’s a tough question; technology (techné, to be precise) runs along tracks that we no longer control. Its progress is now an end unto itself, but we really don’t know what we’re looking for and know even less about what we’ll find. I hope that ten years from now, perhaps precisely because technology will have developed so far and will be such a great part of our lives, perhaps even indispensable, that the art gallery will be a place where people gather to look each other in the eye. I’d like people, customers or just visitors, to come into our space to remove themselves from everyday life just for a moment. I’d like them to admire the works as an object and not just as an image.
I’d like us to discuss, together, what they like or dislike about a work, whether it can take the viewer wandering, whether it sparks a memory, or whether it’s disturbing. I also believe that in this current proliferation of art and artists, in the future, the pictorial quality and historical weight of a work will represent real added value. Finally, we’re convinced that new markets will emerge: India, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia Minor and Africa. These are the geographic areas destined to emerge in the near future, both economically and culturally.
