Laocoon Gallery aims to present London not only with a selection of the best examples of Old Master paintings, drawings, sculptures, works of art and high quality pieces of furniture, but also with works by some of the most important 20th century Italian artists.
The gallery combines the experience of Galleria W. Apolloni and Galleria del Laocoonte.
Apolloni has been in business for three generations and is one of Rome’s oldest and most illustrious antiques shops, selling many masterpieces to museums in Italy and abroad. It started in a small shop at 141 Via Frattina in 1926 before moving into larger premises on Via del Babuino, which would eventually occupy three floors and include four windows whose everchanging display was a constant attraction for Rome’s passers-by. After almost half a century the gallery has moved to nearby Via Margutta 53b, in the heart of Rome’s artists street, in the main ground rooms of the famous Palazzo Patrizi. The property was built especially to house studios for artists and was where Picasso worked when in Rome in 1917, it was also where the British Academy was hosted until 1937. The spacious rooms with their high ceilings and tall windows are ideal for art display while the secret garden at the back, crammed with classical fragments and surrounded by luxuriant ivy make this place, we can definitely say, the most beautiful gallery in Rome.
Wladimiro, Fabrizio e Marco Fabio.The founder was Wladimiro, formerly a silent movie director. Wladimiro’s son Fabrizio (1928-2006) took over at the death of his father in 1948 and soon developed a fame and status equal to Italy’s topmost dealers, known and respected in England, France and the United States. He was a great friend and trusted advisor to the scholars and collectors Mario Praz and Luigi Magnani. In the Magnani Foundation near Parma, now a Museum, the Muse Terspsichore by Antonio Canova, the Hamlet with the ghost of his father by Henry Fuseli and the large malachite tazza given by Alexander I of Russia to Napoleon are among the masterpieces that Fabrizio Apolloni sold to the passionate collector.
The ownership then passed on to Fabrizio’s only son, Marco Fabio, who after having been a porter in Christie’s for a Summer, initially studied Art History at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of London. Upon graduating he was headhunted by Indro Montanelli, one of Italy greatest journalists and the founder and director of newspaper il Giornale, who took him on in 1984 as an art critic. After a successful period there, he became the resident art critic of Epoca magazine for three years, then Panorama, which was followed by a brief spell with La Voce. The latter was Montanelli’s shortlived newspaper founded against Berlusconi, for which Marco Fabio assumed the pen name of Rosa Salvator, a witty and malignant art socialite. In 1994 he began working with Il Messaggero, Rome’s most important newspaper, before his gifts as a raconteur led him to work as author and presenter on a series of art documentaries for Italian TV channel RaiSat Art between 1999 and 2003. His talent for writing, not only on art, was further recognised in 2004 when his first and only novel Il mistero della locanda Serny was listed as a finalist for the Strega Prize, the most famous literary award in Italy, after having earned countless praising reviews. Alongside his other achievements Marco Fabio has also acted as buyer and expert for his father since the age of 16, researching and writing for the gallery’s exhibition catalogues of old master drawings and works of art.
Galleria del Laocoonte, a newest Laocoön and Italian 20th Century Art.Galleria del Laocoonte was born in 2012 out of a shared passion between Marco Fabio and Monica Cardarelli which brought the pair together as business partners as well as husband and wife. The gallery takes its name from the large 16th Century marble statue of the Laocoon by Bandinelli’s pupil Vincenzo de’ Rossi (1525-1587), the author of The Labours of Hercules which is in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. The marble group, found in a French Chateau by the Apolloni family, is exhibited at the centre of the gallery in all its anatomical might and remarkable show of drama and pathos. The piece’s embodying of suffering and violent stress of form are well suited to the displaying of 20th Century art around it. The mission of Galleria del Laocoonte is to expand and enrich the public knowledge and diffusion among collectors and museums of the works of Italian artists of the first half of the Novecento, a period of Italian art less known than that of its more distant past and that of its most recent post-war developments. Since its opening the gallery has held exhibitions on Andrea Sironi, Alberto Martini, Italy’s art of advertisement, Pietro Gaudenzi’s lost frescoes in Rhodes, Preparatory large size “Cartoni” in Italian 20th Century’s frescoes and decorations, Duilio Cambellotti, Leoncillo and Andrea Spadini. Now in preparation, there will be an exhibition on female imagery in Florence in September, and one on classical inspiration in Italian 20th century art that will open in Rome at the end of October.
After first graduating in Political Science, Monica achieved her second degree from La Sapienza University of Rome in History of Art, completing her thesis on the prominent neoclassical Florentine painter Luigi Sabatelli. She went on, at the University of Florence, to complete her postgraduate specialisation in 20th century art, a subject for which she has since then been the driving force in the organisation of numerous exhibitions and the creation and publishing of their accompanying catalogues.