Tommaso Calabro’s Passion for Art
With a personal approach that promotes cultural conversation, the gallerist exhibits works by Leonor Fini and Ismaele Nones in Milan and Venice
Today’s art world conversation often heavily leans on international fairs and big auctions, impressive sales and terrible disasters. Yet, it’s the passionate individuals, their independent galleries and their commitment that carry on a discourse of artist development, promotion and the curation of art collecting. Take the young Italian gallerist Tommaso Calabro, for example, and his two spaces in Milan and Venice. Both galleries reflect his work ethic and passion for art history, personal commitment and care for human relations.
His first experience with art dealing began at age 12, when he started selling art prints on eBay. His grandfather was a fine art printer who went bankrupt during the transition to digital, and his mother and aunt inherited a vast collection of prints from local artists. And with that, he jumped into the world of selling and collecting. After studying at Milan’s Università Bocconi and London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and King’s College, he briefly worked for Sotheby’s. At 28, he opened his first gallery at the charming, neoclassical Palazzo Marietti in Piazza San Sepolcro, right in the heart of Milan’s old town.
Calabro has a very personal approach, collecting works from most of the artists he exhibits. His traditional method is reminiscent of older gallerists, from a time before the art world shifted from a market for connoisseurs to a high-stakes, global financial industry. He hosts events, small concerts and gatherings that promote a cultural conversation around art in a homey atmosphere. That is what attracts clients, other artists and visitors every time a new exhibit opens, including Anish Kapoor and Fabrizio Plessi, Calabro’s neighbor in Venice. “I like that all things regarding my business reflect a sense of connection to who I am, the art that I like and collect, the choices I make,” Calabro says. “I rarely go to art fairs and prefer running my business in my own spaces.”
The current exhibit in his new Milan gallery at Casa Grondona (a 19th-century palace designed by famed architect Enrico Terzaghi) is dedicated to surrealist Italian-Argentine painter Leonor Fini, whom fellow artist Max Ernst once described as “an Italian fury of scandalous elegance, caprice and passion.”
The “In Scena” exhibition presents a selection of drawings and watercolors on paper and preparatory studies for the theatre created by Leonor Fini between 1948 and 1969. During that time, the multifaceted artist ventured into costume designing for theatrical shows across Europe. She worked for George Balanchine on Le Palais de Cristal at the Opéra de Paris and with Roland Petit on Les Demoiselles de la Nuit. She also conceived Le Rêve de Leonor, a ballet presented at London’s Royal Opera House.
The collection on view reveals the meticulous process of defining characters and the relationship between their bodies and the garments, long before they even make it to the stage. Through these works, her most surrealist paintings and even through her social life of memorable masked appearances, Fini always focused on theatrics and disguise as a form of self-expression and a space to build and develop an identity. “To put on a disguise is a kind of magic that allows me to enter other dimensions, other species, other worlds,” she used to say.
Leonor Fini’s work is largely collected by Madonna—for obvious reasons of similar artistic languages—and frequently quoted in her work. Calabro is also a Fini fan: this is his third exhibit about her, the first having been with Francesco Vezzoli, who presented his personal take on her works and strong personality. The second drew a parallel discourse between the works of Fini and those of her lover, Stanislao Lepri. “She is part of a group of artists I have long been studying and collecting, all having been represented by the legendary gallerist Alexander Iolas,” says Calabro. Iolas was among those who helped launch stellar artists’s careers like Andy Warhol, Fabrizio Clerici and Niki de Saint Phalle.
Walking into Calabro’s Venice gallery, located on the first floor of a 13th-century palazzo by Campo San Polo, feels like an enchanting experience. Contemporary art pieces are placed in the medieval courtyard and grand staircase, while his exhibitions are displayed upstairs with traditional Venetian floors, wooden Gothic vaulted ceilings and huge windows.
In just five years, Calabro established himself as a gallerist specialized in 20th-century modern art, then he decided to expand with contemporary figurative art from selected artists of his own generation, like Ismaele Nones, whose solo exhibition titled “What We Hold, What We Lose” is currently on display at his Venice gallery. Human figures, wild animals, birds and plants are a common narrative in his paintings: their presence is iconic and set against a suspended space, a contrast that works best on the larger-sized canvases.
Ismaele Nones, the son of an artist himself, hopes viewers will immerse themselves in his works’ narratives. He presents very human themes such as conflict, sexuality, loneliness, alienation and conviviality. He also uses art history as “a toolbox to draw on” when constructing images that connect different times, symbols and imaginaries. His blend of influences include ancient Byzantine art, 20th-century Arte Povera and contemporary British Pop Art.
Although Nones’ style is contemporary, “it brings along the same mid-20th-century flavor that is present across my curatorial path,” Calabro says. “I decided to organize this exhibit when I saw in Nones’s work a clarity of focus. His growth has brought him to a point of solid artistic identity” in both his paintings and other art forms, like his large-sized mosaic, which was highly acclaimed at the 9th Biennale of Mosaic in Ravenna. Nones was also recently appointed to paint the silk drape trophy of Tuscany’s historic horse race, Palio di Siena, a notable achievement.
Calabro not only promotes artists at his welcoming galleries and events, but he also guides both young and experienced collectors in a way that strengthens the art world, helping it endure the unpredictability of our times.
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