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PRELIMINARY INVENTORY OF THE GALLERIA DELL'ARIETE RECORDS, 1955-1993
990058
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Table of contents
Title: Galleria dell'Ariete records
Date (inclusive): 1955-1993
Number: 990058
Creator/Collector:
Galleria dell'Ariete
Physical Description:
46.43 linear feet
(88 boxes; 2 flatfile folders)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, California, 90049-1688
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The complete business records of the Galleria dell'Ariete of Milan, Italy, from 1955, when it opened, through its closing
in the mid-1980s. It was among the most important galleries in Italy for contemporary art, and had extensive connections with
dealers, collectors, artists, and critics in Europe, the United States, and Japan. The archive documents these connections
through correspondence, business and financial papers, catalogs, press clippings, and an extensive photographic record.
Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
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Language: Collection material is primarily in
Italian and
English
Beatrice Monti della Corte opened the Galleria dell'Ariete at Via San Andrea, 5, Milan, Italy in 1955, when she was twenty-five
years old, principally as a showplace for modern art-her first major exhibition at the gallery was of lithographs and engravings
by Picasso-though the formal statutes of the company state that its object is 'il commercio in generale di opere d'arte antiche
e moderne'. Thus Monti della Corte regularly exhibited and dealt in such items as 17th to 19th century Indian miniature paintings,
Afghan kilims and dhurries, 19th century American patchwork quilts, and 18th and 19th century Italian folk paintings on glass.
A 1958 exhibition,
Tauromachia, brought together engravings of bullfighting subjects by Goya and Picasso.
However, the main focus was on the work of living artists, and the Galleria dell'Ariete rapidly became one of the foremost
Italian galleries for contemporary art, forming close connections with such like-minded establishments as the galleries of
Kasmin and Waddington in London, and Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, and Betty Parsons in New York. Monti della Corte had
a special interest in introducing modern-especially new, young-Italian artists to American collectors, through her contacts
with American dealers, and in promoting modern American artists in Italy, through her own gallery. Artists such as Cy Twombly,
Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns amongst the Americans, and Andrea Cascella, Enrico Castellani, and Luigi Parzini amongst
Italians were particular enthusiasms of hers, as was the Spaniard Antoni Tápies, and she kept in personal contact with some
of them even after she had finally closed the gallery. She was also amongst the first to exhibit the work of the English artists
Francis Bacon and David Hockney in Italy, and, as her business became established, she started to bring modern Asian art,
especially Japanese, within its range.
In 1970 Monti della Corte opened a new section of the Galleria dell'Ariete, at the same Via San Andrea address, under the
name Ariete Grafica. It was dedicated to drawings, lithographs, engravings, prints, and editions of small sculptures, leaving
the main gallery free to concentrate on paintings and large sculptures. Ariete Grafica itself published editions of works
in various media by a number of artists. A list from 1980 has twenty-one names of "artisti delle nostri edizioni"; amongst
them, Andrea Cascella, Diego Esposito, Barry Flanagan, Nancy Martin, Luigi Parzini, and Shu Takahashi, and including a serial
work by Alan Shields in the form of hand-painted, beaded crochet panels.
Monti della Corte closed Galleria dell'Ariete as an exhibition space on November 30, 1979, though she maintained an office
at Via San Andrea, and from it carried on dealing in paintings and sculpture under the gallery's name for a few more years.
The records contain papers related to these transactions dated up to 1983. Ariete Grafica remained open at the same address,
and exhibitions were held and business conducted there into the mid-1980s, by which time the gallery was handling paintings
and sculptures as well as graphic arts. As late as 1993 Monti della Corte was using the Via San Andrea address to deal with
paperwork connected to her loans of artworks from her personal collection for exhibitions at museums and other galleries,
but her own galleries were, by then, closed. Monti della Corte married the novelist Baron Gregor von Rezzori in the 1960s.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Galleria dell'Ariete records, 1955-1993, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 990058
Acquired from Beatrice Monti della Corte von Rezzori in 1999.
Alan Tomlinson processed the collection and wrote the preliminary inventory, which was encoded by Laura Schroffel in 2008.
Annette Leddy further processed the collection and revised the finding aid in 2012. Correspondence may be further processed
at a future time.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Galleria dell'Ariete records contain all of the surviving business papers of the gallery from its foundation by Beatrice
Monti della Corte in 1955 to its closure in 1979, plus papers connected with her continued activities under the Galleria's
name during the following few years. Also included are the business records of the Galleria's offshoot, Ariete Grafica, from
its opening in 1970 to the mid-1980s. These records comprise correspondence (letters received and copies of letters sent)
with dealers, collectors, and artists in many countries; miscellaneous business papers, including accounts and stock cards,
which give extensive information on the acquisition, sale, and movement of works of art; and business diaries and minute books,
the earliest of which include the articles of association and the statutes of the Galleria. The correspondence is arranged
by region (Europe, the United States, and Asia), and then chronologically.
These materials are supplemented by an extensive file of press clippings, collecting items about specific exhibitions at the
Galleria, items about artists and others associated with it, and some items of general interest about art and culture. There
is a complete run of catalogs for the Galleria's exhibitions from 1955-1979, with related ephemera, and a collection of pages
of signatures from visitors' books put out for some of the exhibitions. A comprehensive photographic archive documents works
of art and exhibitions, and includes photographs of artists and other individuals, and of gallery activities. Photographers
include Carlo Cisventi, Ugo Mulas, Hans Namuth, and Vicenzo, among others.
Arranged in four series:
Series I: Correspondence, 1955-1983;
Series II: Photographic documentation, 1955-1979, undated;
Series III: Business records, 1955-1993, undated;
Series IV: Clippings, catalogs, other publications, 1955-1977, undated.
Appel, Karel, 1921-2006
Arakawa, Shūsaku, 1936-2010
Castelli, Leo
Francis, Sam, 1923-1994
Frankenthaler, Helen, 1928-
King, Phillip, 1934-
Monti della Corte von Rezzori, Beatrice
Saura, Antonio, 1930-1998
Scordia, Antonio, 1918-
Sutherland, Graham Vivian, 1903-1980
Takahashi, Shū
Ariete Grafica
Betty Parsons Gallery
Kasmin Limited
Leo Castelli Gallery
Art dealers -- Italy -- 20th century
Art dealers--United States
Art, American--20th century
Art, Asian
Art, Italian--20th century
Collectors and collecting
Black-and-white photographs
Carbon copies
Clippings files
Color photographs
Contact sheets
Inventories
Invoices
Notebooks
Photocopies
Scrapbooks
Transparencies
Appel, Karel, 1921-2006
Arakawa, Shūsaku, 1936-2010
Betty Parsons Gallery
Castelli, Leo
Cisventi, Carlo
Francis, Sam, 1923-1994
Frankenthaler, Helen, 1928-
Kasmin Limited
King, Phillip, 1934-
Leo Castelli Gallery
Monti della Corte von Rezzori, Beatrice
Mulas, Ugo
Namuth, Hans
Parsons, Betty
Saura, Antonio, 1930-1998
Scordia, Antonio, 1918-
Sonnabend, Ileana
Sutherland, Graham Vivian, 1903-1980
Takahashi, Shū
Tàpies, Antoni, 1923-