Private companies can always understand more easily not only market trends but also changes in society and its tendencies. Perhaps this is why companies and foundations in these years have oriented their artistic interests towards the contemporary world. Not wrongfully. Indeed, artistic data confirm that the boom of contemporary art has also conquered Italy.
On the basis of a recent survey carried out by the Institute for Public Opinion, the market of contemporary art would have an enormous potential in the Bel Paese. The Ispo survey observed that 9 million Italians claim to be interested in contemporary art (18% of the population) and about 5 million would like to buy a work of art. Furthermore, Italians seem to be becoming more aware of young artists. According to 71% of the people interviewed for this research, art and the valorization of the big and young artists are important as cultural heritage of Italy.

Considered for many years a trivial product of the mass subculture, the tradition of graffiti-art, Writing and Street Art intended in the broader sense of the term, has now broken into the art system. In Italy, for instance, the first space that housed this type of art was the Prada Foundation, which hosted Barry McGee.

Artissima has presented a new project, a competition aimed at launching on the International market young Italian artists aged under 35. The project emerges from fifteen years of experience in the field of contemporary art, experience of international rank that has made Artissima become a reference appointment for Italian and foreign galleries that deal in contemporary art.
The last edition, the first directed by Andrea Bellini, had set itself the ambitious objective of being really International and proposing new young talents. The appointment was met with great success by the critics and the public: 43,000 people present, fully booked for conferences and debates, and important purchases realized even for the foreign market.

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Cartier Award is one of the most important European artistic awards. Initiated in 2006, it was founded by Gasworks, a contemporary arts organisation with sites in South London, (host to 12 artists’ studios and a programme of exhibits, residences, international study grants and educational projects) and sponsored by Cartier, the French company linked to contemporary art already with the Foundation with sites in Paris and an associate sponsor of the Frieze Art Fair.

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

Ever since the media and commercial exchanges have amplified the horizon of the art world, which was previously confined within the limits of schools and academies, it gave life to a complex and organised trade system for the diffusion of contemporary art.

In the eighties, the Swiss gallery owner Roswitha Haftmann had already thought of the idea to create a foundation to which she would leave the greater part of her fortune in works of art. Begun in 1999, the immediate aim of the Foundation was to recognise achievements in the visual artists.