The month of September brought along with it the financial collapse of uncle Sam. Since Lehman Brother Holdings Inc., historical company active in financial services at a global level, announced its intention to file for Chapter 11, the procedure of “piloted failure” provided for by US law, a burdensome situation has been perceived and economists have seriously started questioning the future of the luxury industry. While ex employees were leaving the Lehman Brothers offices with their boxes, experts of the art market wondered what would happen in the future.
The main international economists are now claiming that the crisis of the financial markets, and the one of real estate markets, are definitely starting to affect also the art market. The economy is changing. Nobody can establish with precision which direction it will take. According to analysts next year will be comparable to the early Nineties, when prices fell by 44% in two years.
After a period in which auction houses registered a series of records, especially for contemporary art, which saw its prices multiplied in 2007, the wind has suddenly changed.
A similar situation to the one in 1989, a crisis that was overcome only in the mid-Nineties, with a fall back in 2001 when the Twin Towers collapsed, blocking for days the US financial system. Sotheby’s postponed to an unscheduled date its auctions in New York and the magnate of luxury Arnault supported Phillips. 

In times of economic crisis, as the one we are experiencing, we increasingly feel the need to save our resources, by investing them in a safe and possibly profitable way. The best thing to do is to invest in a work of art. Of course, the climate that the art market is facing is not the best. All the great experts are giving their opinion but they are also asking important questions.
An uncertainty that continues to spread, mainly due to the mediocre quotations realised in this period. Perhaps, hard times will come. The true values of the market will be redefined. In this phase of transformation and consolidation it is hoped that the art market becomes less élitist, and that even the average collectors starts to emerge.

Blindarte modern and contemporary art auction n.33 will take place in Naples, december 18 2008, the first session starting at 4pm and the second session at 8.30 pm, this auction will offer more than 430 interesting artworks .
We would like to take this opportunity to let you know a few of the highlights of this auction: Giorgio de Chirico “Cavalli in riva al mare” (oil on panel signed), realized in 1948 . The painting, exhibited in many Japanese museums like Chiba Perfectural Museum of art, Giappone; Teien Museum, Tokyo; Navio Museum, Osaka; Fukuyama Museum, Hiroshima, comes with impeccable provenance form various important collections and it is estimated 80.000/120.000 euros.

For almost all of his 73 years, the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi lived in his parents’ apartment in Bologna and devoted himself to painting small, pale still-life tableaux of shapely earthenware jugs, ceramic vases and long- necked bottles.
For variety, he moved the bottles around, spreading them out or clumping them together, or taking some away. At times he added squat boxes to the mix or, at one point, a sea shell.
The stubborn dedication, or madness, that drove this retiring proto-Minimalist is the true subject of “Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964″ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Though Morandi’s work was exhibited in New York galleries during his lifetime, this is the first full-career survey devoted to his singular, or single-minded, art in the U.S.
Among the 110 works on view are the odd, almost primitive landscape and a few (very few) self-portraits, made when Morandi was starting out and under the influence of Giorgio de Chirico and Paul Cezanne.
But the bulk of this show, installed in galleries usually devoted to art dating from no later than the 15th century, gives viewers what they want: the geometric meditations on crockery - all titled, simply, “Still Life” - that have become synonymous with Morandi’s name. (Bloomberg)

CHRISTIE’S AND SOTHEBY’S OVERCOME THE WINDS OF CRISIS WITH “MADE IN ITALY” ART 
If the London auctions dedicated to contemporary art alarmed the art market due to the downturns of Sotheby’s, Phillips de Pury and Christie’s, which altogether had an average of unsold works equal to 50%, at last the economy of sales seems to have heaved a small sigh of relief with the Italian Sales.

The Italian art market is continuing to rouse enthusiasm and attract the attention of worldwide famous collectors. A sector that has recorded a constant development over the years. Just think of 2007 when Christie’s and Sotheby’s held the Italian Sales in London. The former auction house had totalled 21 billion euros, while Sotheby’s almost took 22 billion. Last year, both auction houses sold 87% of their catalogue works.  A noticeable result for Sotheby’s, whose highest sale estimate reached 16,740,000 euros, thus realizing a 76% spread, almost equalling the success achieved in 2006, when an 80% increase was recorded.  On the contrary, Christie’s achieved 8% less than the highest estimates.

It has taken three years of restoration and 6 million euros but in the end Villa Necchi is reopening its doors for visitors. The beautiful residence built between 1932 and 1935 by architect Piero Portaluppi and modernized by Tomaso Buzzi, brought architectonic rationalism to the Italian economic capital. The villa was built by an enlightened family of the high bourgeoisie of Pavia that, having moved to Milan, made of their house a coterie for cultural aggregation open to the world. It was donated to the FAI in 2001 by the sisters Gigina Necchi Campigli and Nedda Necchi and today it is reopening its doors, placing itself as the city’s renewed cultural reference point, which in the administrators’ intentions will have to be not only a place to admire but a place to live.

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Italian publisher Rolando Pieraccini, who has lived for about thirty years in Finland, has become an Art Ambassador, or rather he has put into practice the important mystery of the intention of art as an extraordinary diplomatic medium. In his entire career as a publisher, in many ways Pieraccini promoted the cultural rapport between Finland and Italy, organising on one hand, numerous exhibits of Italian artists in Finland and viceversa. And what’s more, he contributed to the formation of relevant modern Finnish art collections in European museums including the Albertina in Vienna and Florence’s Uffizi Gallery.