The Company Collections curated by ARTantide Gallery

Fapin Srl | Villa Meriggio

In the splendid setting of Valeggio sul Mincio (VR), Villa Meriggio stands on the border between Veneto and Lombardy in a suggestive place with an anachronistic charm.

Fapin Srl, which has placed its headquarters in the Villa, has studied those spaces as a meeting and reflection place where you can have time to think and perhaps rediscover yourself.

The philosophy that encompasses the essence of Villa Meriggio is developed in four movements.

As in Gabriele Dannunzio's 1903 work (Il Meriggio), the complete absorption of the soul in Nature is the first of the four.

In the western sofa room, an intimate and refined place, the work of the artist of the Movimento Arte Etica Gianfranco Gentile Maybe only the jellyfish will be saved was placed on the main wall, an extraordinary reinterpretation of Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, which underlines the man's inability to take care of nature and its inhabitants. The picture placed in the living room serves as a starting point for reflection on our work and our impact on the planet, soliciting the need to build a new relationship with nature.

The environment and Nature are also protagonists in the offices on the upper floor, where Alessandro Zannier, also a member of the Ethical Art Movement, was chosen for the Hyperobject Still Life works, the result of a complex work that crosses art and science and with the collaboration of the CNR, the Universities of Venice and Auckland (New Zealand) and a team of expert international programmers, recreates in abstract form the masses of data that describe the forms of modern pollution (fine particles, microplastics in the seas, noise pollution of the waters, etc...), reworking and transforming them into 3D videos and paintings on canvas.

Also on the upper floor, to complete the cycle of Nature, a triptych by Gianfranco Gentile, Venus in the concrete forest, was placed in the management office, a work that makes us reflect on how nature will be able to recover its own space at the expense of abandoned human settlements of a civilization that did not know how to live with its own planet. The work is freely inspired by the metaphysics of Giorgio De Chirico.

The second movement is guided by Outer Vision so that anyone can be enthralled by what is outside of their essence. The architecture of the Villa and its gardens guide the traveler in a silent dialogue between nature and the beauties that surround it. From the top of the square that meditates on the Mincio valley, a sculpture by Jaume Plensa, the head of a woman (Julia, 2018) with light and elegant lines, "observes" the landscape with closed eyes, as if completely absorbed in Nature .

Inside the Villa you breathe refinement and you are hit by the third movement: Inspiration. In the atrium, the visitor is greeted by three works by the artist Matteo Mezzadri (always belonging to the Ethical Art Movement) from the series The dark matter. The artist exploded plaster-plastic reproductions of ancient sculptures, creating videos, photographs, statues and bas-reliefs. The intent is to strike the observer and make him reflect on the drama of the destruction of works of art perpetrated in every war or conflict, causing damage not only to the defeated, but to all humanity.

The same theme has been tackled with a more ironic vein by the artist Marco Bertìn (also from Ethical Art Movement) who becomes part of the Villa's permanent collection with the sculpture In case of war - Venus by Canova. The artist's work is exhibited in the atrium of the hours next to classical sculptures. The camouflage of the work represents the subtle provocation proposed to defend, in the "case of war", the artistic and cultural heritage from bombing and vandalization, camouflaging it and, utopianically, placing it in the woods.

As the last movement is the Inner Vision. You can't say you're completely in touch with your self until you really look inside. Even the Villa, like the visitor, must pay attention to the coexistence of internal and external vision. So the chosen work by the artist of the Ethical Art Movement Jorge R. Pombo accentuates the contrast of opposites: inside and outside, black and white, ancient and modern... they must be able to coexist in a single canvas. Variation of Liberty, Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix is the perfect example of the concept of struggle of the opposites: two opposite concepts come into contact creating a synthesis between them but remaining themselves exalting each other's own characteristics creating something of unique. As happens in the Villa, as happens in the attention to customers and suppliers treated with great attention.

The choice of artists from the Ethical Art Movement such as Marco Bertìn, Gianfranco Gentile, Matteo Mezzadri, Jorge R. Pombo and Alessandro Zannier marries wonderfully with the philosophy of the Villa and the Meriggio, in the certainty of being a guide for visitors and travelers who enter in the Villa for reasons related to business, they also leave enriched in mind and soul.

Villa Meriggio always looks forward, with the new installations by Julia Bornefeld and Carlo Bonfà, continuing to marry the culture of the Ethical Art Movement, integrating it with the culture of Meriggio.