Art dealer Frediano Farsetti, owner of the Frediano Farsetti Arte gallery and founder of the Farsetti auction house, two important names in the Italian art market, passed away today at the age of 91. Born in 1934 in Impruneta, on the outskirts of Florence, Farsetti belonged to that generation that grew up in the postwar period that firmly believed in the possibility of reinventing oneself and building a new future from nothing, even in the art world. With his vision and unusual determination, he managed to carve out a prominent space for himself a changing market, accompanying the evolution of Italian collecting and becoming a protagonist of a path that has marked the country’s cultural history.
His debut came in 1952, when he decided to move to Prato on the advice of the painter Ottone Rosai, a friend of his who saw an opportunity in the woolen city, which was home to several collectors. At the beginning of the 1950s, Prato was a city in ferment, and it was in this context that Frediano Farsetti began his career as a gallery owner, founding in 1955 a small gallery-workshop in Via dei Cimatori, where he was soon joined by his brother Franco, then 15 years old, who would share his professional adventure until his death in 2022.
In 1957 he opened the first real Farsetti Gallery in Via Lanaioli, which soon became a point of reference for artists, collectors, writers and intellectuals, as well as a place for meeting, discussion and experimentation. In the following years the business expanded rapidly and the gallery opened branches in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1964, Versilia in 1969, and Milan in 1982. Meanwhile, in 1962, Farsetti had also opened an auction house of the same name.
In 1991 the new auction house headquarters in Prato, designed by architect Italo Gamberini next to the Luigi Pecci Museum for Contemporary Art, was inaugurated. With its two thousand square meters of exhibition space, auction rooms and air-conditioned vaults, the facility marks a turning point, placing Farsetti’s auction house among the most avant-garde in Europe.
Frediano Farsetti’s commitment as a gallery owner also found expression in high-profile events. In 1962 he organized the first auction of modern art in central Italy broadcast by RAI television cameras, an event that marked a turning point in the popularization of contemporary art in our country. In 1996 he produced the largest anthological exhibition dedicated to Ottone Rosai at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, which was inaugurated by President of the Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.
In the course of seventy years of activity, Frediano Farsetti has held and organized more than two hundred auctions, presenting more than one hundred and six thousand works, many of which have entered public and private collections of international importance. Among the most emblematic episodes was the Uffizi Gallery’s purchase in 2004 of Renato Guttuso’s monumental Battaglia di Ponte dell’Ammiraglio, which enriched the museum’s collections with a masterpiece of 20th-century realism. In recent years, the redevelopment of the former Pocol Cable Car complex in Cortina d’Ampezzo, which began in 2021, has transformed these spaces into a multifunctional exhibition and cultural center in preparation for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.
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| Farewell to Frediano Farsetti, founder of Prato auction house |
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