Founded in 2016, Looking for Art is located in the city centre of Milan, the Italian flagship for arts and fashion.
Related articles: Creating the future of the arts. 31 emerging artists - How To Discover Emerging Artists - Is art a good investment?
Looking for Art is an Innovative Start Up dedicated to the spread and sale of contemporary art. By organising events in different locations in Milan and gallery exhibitions for beginner artists, they quickly made a name for themselves and within four years they went from being a cultural association to a structured company. Today, the team is composed by Matteo Occhipinti (CEO and Creative Director), Mauro Cesaretti (Talent Scout and Account Manager), Eleonora Molignani (Artists Manager & Art Director), Francesca Palmigiano (Ambassador and Communication Manager) and Camilla Rivieri (Gallerist & Sales Manager). These young creatives minds with different and complementary backgrounds share one single goal: building a physical and digital space in accordance with the new forms of communication, in order to promote emerging artists (under-35), supporting their careers and their access into the Art Market.
Discover more works by Matteo Brivio.
The idea of Looking for Art was born in 2016, when Frank Pascal and Matteo Occhipinti, the initial founders, thought to involve young Milanese artists through some artistic aperitifs. Works by unknown artists with a passion for painting and photography appeared in different places around the city. To make the proposal more attractive, they decided to follow the format of the contest. Each week, 24 artists were selected for these brand-new group exhibitions; for many of them "The Contest" was the first public display. An exhibition at the Milan Triennale was the craved first prize.
Discover more works by Cecilia Maran.
Promoting and revaluating emerging art is a crucial factor in the growth of a culturally advanced urban community. The gallery focuses not only on the economic aspect of its business, but also on the social education that art can provide. Specifically, Looking for Art has organized several meetings and projects with the involvement of no-profit organisations such as OXFAM for the theme "Immigrant Emergency", Greenpeace with the campaign to protect bees, Amnesty International with the title "Stop Torture", Save The children with the water emergency, WWF for deforestation.
In addition, by supporting young artists, they actually provide an all-round service to facilitate a sort of privileged entrance into the difficult and sometimes elitist Art Market.
Discover more works by Lorenzo Barbieri Hermitte.
The gallery acts as an intermediary between young artists and buyers, providing both parties a reliable and professional service: on the one hand, Looking for Art offers a promotion and advisory service to the represented artists, on the other hand the gallery gives the chance to potential and actual buyers to support local culture by rediscovering the pleasure of purchasing original and cutting-edge works of art.
The aim of their activity is to represent innovation and uniqueness for the Contemporary Art Market. Finding a balance between tradition and cutting-edge projects constitutes one of the main challenges. To do so, they have focused on the realisation of an Art Factory operating on the national territory and able to host artists, exhibitions and events. Moreover, thanks to an online community that represents emerging trends, they stress the attention on the requests of the present days, while keeping a gaze towards the prospects of the future.
Discover more works by Douglas Da Silva Araujo.
Last year has been an extremely interesting occasion to develop a more advanced and structured online presence; indeed, they concentrated on a variety of digital activities such as online platforms, in order to support and encourage their fresh and innovative mindset. Particularly in the age of Covid-19, the problems connected to a physical location on an art gallery emerged overwhelmingly, and this issue turned into an opportunity when they realized that pushing hard for the development and improvement of the website and social profiles, especially Instagram, was essential to survive and expand their business.
During the lock-down, dedicated offerings were delivered for the contracting of artworks, which focus precisely on the online space.