Studio la Città is an art gallery that was opened in Verona in 1969 by Hélène de Franchis, who is still its proprietor. The gallery’s early shows were typified by such artists as Lucio Fontana, Piero Dorazio, Mario Schifano, and Gianni Colombo, flanked by foreign artists linked to European and American analytical and minimalist art, and who included Robyn Denny, Richard Smith, David Leverett, Ulrich Erben, Richard Tuttle, Sol Lewitt, Richard Smith, and Robert Mangold. The presence of artists from abroad opened up the gallery’s international horizon and in that period Studio la Città proposed artists who were little seen in Italy, or not seen at all.
It was in this same period that the gallery began to take part in its first contemporary art fairs; the first was Düsseldorf in 1973, then Art Basel in 1974, Bologna in 1975, and then Cologne, Paris, and Madrid. This frequentation of the international world opened a wholly innovative chapter for that period and saw the gallery’s participation in all the main European international fairs. Later on the path undertaken was widened beyond Europe, as were the artists selected.
In 1989 the gallery moved to a larger space, again in Verona. Here, in the period that immediately followed the Transavanguardia, which had no influence on the choices of the gallery, the artistic preference was for the chromatic minimalism of such artists as Lawrence Carroll, Herbert Hamak, John McCracken, David Simpson, and Ettore Spalletti, and for that area of research that was exploring the limits between contemporary society and pure nature, with such artists as Jacob Hashimoto and Hiroyuki Masuyama. The leitmotif of most of the choices made by the gallery over time was a search for a silent and intimate expressive form. It was for this reason that artists including Gabriele Basilico, Alberto Garutti, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Ettore Spalletti, and Giulio Paolini are considered to be contemporary classics by Studio la Città which, however, has never lost its interest in complex modes of expression that require the utilisation of different media. Since 2007, and the opening of the gallery’s new venue in Lungadige Galtarossa, the new large rooms have permitted the organisation of exhibitions of the greatest interest. Here the gallery has hosted the new languages of Indian art, and this culminated in the show titled India Crossing, with such artists as Riyas Komu, Hema Upadhyay, Nataraj Sharma, Valsan Koorma Kolleri, Ashim Purkayastha, and Shilpa Gupta.
In 2012 – after having consistently taken part in the most important international art fairs since the
1970s, and also having participated in the fairs in New York, Miami, and Shanghai – Hélène de Franchis decided to interrupt this activity. This was a resolute and radical decision mainly derived from the natural evolution of the fairs which were becoming increasingly market-oriented and less interested in quality and the search for artistic innovation.
Studio la Città maintained its interest in research and the pleasure of exhibiting interesting artists, but it could not tolerate an often unjustified financial appetite. This was to lead the gallery to undertake exhibitions in collaboration with museums and institutions in public and private spaces. The most recent of these was the installation by Roberto Pugliese, La Finta Semplice, organised at the fresco museum in Verona, a collateral event to the ArtVerona fair in collaboration with the directorate of the Veronese civic museums. But mention should also be made of the one man show by Ettore Spalletti, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cini on the occasion of the 2015 Venice Biennale and held to mark the opening to the public of Palazzo Cini; the Gas Giant installation by Jacob Hashimoto, curated by Marco Meneguzzo, at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in 2013; and, the show Ad Naturam hosted by the natural history museum in Verona; in 2012 the photographic show Modern Views of Ancient Treasures by Lynn Davis at the Archeological Museum in Venice was followed by an amazing concert at the Fenice theatre by Philip Glass; in 2011 there was an event devoted to the composer Arvo Paert with a special exhibition at the gallery as well as an extraordinary concert in the monumental church of San Fermo Maggiore in Verona; in 2007 the large-scale installation by Herbert Hamak on the walkways of Castelvecchio in Verona was curated by Luca Massimo Barbero. And this is just to mention a few of the events the gallery has organised.
Recently, in the years of the Venice Biennale the gallery has organized shows to present in a complete way some of her artists, in 2017 a show called The End of Utopia with Jacob Hashimoto and Emil Lukas in a XVII century Palace on the Grand Canal. In 2019 , on the Giudecca Island in
a very articulated space of the Shipyards the gallery organized three shows by Hiroyuki Masuyama, a group show curated by Jacob Hashimoto Recursions and Mutations and in September a double one man show, by Herbert Hamak and Giorgio Vigna called Acque Solide, curated by Marco Menerguzzo.
Despite the effort involved for all these events, the exhibition programme in the gallery has continued without interruption and, in fact, continues with solo and group shows involving such artists as, Vincenzo Castella, Lynn Davis, Arthur Duff, Herbert Hamak, Jacob Hashimoto, Emil Lukas, Roberto Pugliese, Mikhael Subotzky Massimo Vitali, Luigi Carboni, Andreco, Shaun Gladwell and Giorgio Vigna.
December 2019, was an important date for Studio la Città: it was the 50th anniversary of the gallery. On this occasion, Hélène de Franchis decided to celebrate the event with an exhibition, which a heterogeneous selection of works by the artists who have contributed to her highly personal “style”. This show was both a self-portrait of a gallery dealer as well as a journey through various trends in Italian and international contemporary art, from the 1960s until today.
