Bologna's Galleries Signal a Renaissance in Italian Art

Three exhibitions in Bologna suggest a revival of the private gallery model, emphasizing renewed collaboration between artists, critics, curators, and gallerists. At Labs Gallery, Giuseppe De Mattia and Giulia Marchi curated a show on Danilo Montanari, highlighting his work with the SuperGruppo collective and his solo publishing efforts that shaped art dissemination over forty years. At OTTO Gallery, Alberto Zanchetta's Tetraedro transformed three rooms into a sequence of stations—Wunderkammer, cabinet, studiolo—featuring dense walls of works by established names like Arruzzo, Casadei, and Portatadino alongside emerging talents, with ceramic pieces by Chiodi, Nero, and Salvatori. At Galleria Astuni, Fabio Cavallucci, formerly of Pecci and the Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Shenzhen, curated La realtà, i linguaggi, a show exploring linguistic codes and their deviations, featuring artists from Nannucci to Rozendaal and Agnieszka Polska. The quality of these proposals, in both installation and concept, offers a glimmer of hope for the gallery system after decades of economic crises and the pandemic lockdowns.