Rediscoveries

A podcast to highlight Gabriele Devecchi

The first one, funded by the Italian Council, was promoted by the archive to bring attention back to this protagonist of the T

by Silvia Anna Barrilà

9 August 2024

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Sede dell’Archivio Gabriele Devecchi, Milano, 2024 - Courtesy Archivio Gabriele Devecchi - (Fotografie di Giacomo Devecchi)

5' min read

Key points

The story
Space environments
Silvers
The market

5' min read

The first and only podcast financed by the'Italian Council, the programme of the Ministry of Culture created in 2017 to promote the production, knowledge and dissemination of contemporary Italian creation in the field of visual arts, is now available. It is dedicated to Gabriele Devecchi: a Milanese artist, designer, architect, goldsmith and lecturer who died in 2011, a multifaceted but also underestimated figure. It was proposed by his three children Alice, Matteo and Giacomo Devecchi who, after carrying on the artist's archive activities discreetly from 2015 to the present, have now decided to come out into the open, focusing on repositioning the figure of their father in the history of art and design.

The project was financed by the Italian Council with €30,000, to which the family added another 20 per cent investment; it was developed together with the digital agency Pale Blue Dot and has as its author Alberto Saibene.

The Story

The podcast is divided into six episodes, starting with Devecchi's membership of Gruppo T in the early 1960s, together with Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo and Grazia Varisco. "Back then, they were called 'those of the little cars' by the more conservative avant-garde," says their daughter Alice Devecchi, "because they used mopeds inside the works to create movement, challenge the viewer's perception and stimulate the interaction between person and object." Their first exhibition, which was deliberately not called an exhibition, but "Miriorama" to emphasise the multiplicity of the image, was held in 1960 at the Pater Gallery; then there were several one-man shows until 1962, when there was the pinnacle exhibition of programmed art in the Olivetti shop in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, based on an idea by Bruno Munari and with a text by Umberto Eco, which travelled throughout Italy and abroad, even touching on the United States and Japan.

Sede dell’Archivio Gabriele Devecchi, Milano, 2024Courtesy Archivio Gabriele DevecchiFotografie di Giacomo Devecchi

Space environments

The members of Group T continued to work together and individually, creating not only moving works, but also spatial environments, into which the visitor is invited to enter, becoming part of the art installation. The group never officially disbanded, but in 1968 there was their last exhibition together, 'Cinetisme, Spectacle, Environment' in Grenoble, with a 'programmed obstacle course'. In 2010, to celebrate 50 years since the birth of the T Group, the exhibition 'Miriorama 16' was held at the Fondazione Mudima in Milan, with 40 works and environments.

Sede dell’Archivio Gabriele Devecchi, Milano, 2024Courtesy Archivio Gabriele DevecchiFotografie di Giacomo Devecchi

Silvers

But Devecchi's artistic production did not only take place within the T Group. In 1969, his father Pierino Devecchi, himself an artist who had joined Futurism at a young age, entrusted him with the family silverware company, which he had founded in 1935. It was a classic silverware house, although he had already shown visionariness by involving Gio Ponti and Luigi Caccia Dominioni. Gabriele Devecchi was able to innovate by designing avant-garde objects, which later entered museum collections such as those of the Triennale, the Museo del 900, the Gallerie d'Italia and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The British museum, in particular, has two coffee pots from the mid-1980s that reinterpret the classic coffee pot by inserting it into geometric shapes. Another iconic collection is the Slow Drink, with a carafe with a sculptural spout that shows the passage of water, slowing the gesture and drawing attention to the object. Also famous is the Arganto collection, which gave its name to the podcast.

Sede dell’Archivio Gabriele Devecchi, Milano, 2024Courtesy Archivio Gabriele DevecchiFotografie di Giacomo Devecchi

The market

On the market, Group T had a moment of luck in the 1960s-70s. Among the first collectors was also Lucio Fontana, who bought a work at the group's first exhibition as a sign of support. Later, however, with the expansion into the environmental dimension, the works no longer proved to be suitable for the market and even the group members themselves, by their own choice, aspired to a more democratic model of artistic experience, not aiming to climb the pedestal, but often producing editions that were accessible to the general public.

While Colombo, Varisco and Boriani were more valued over time, Devecchi did not develop a market, partly because he had the silverware to rely on. Let us also remember that politically Devecchi, together with his wife Corinna Morandi, an urban planner and lecturer at the Polytechnic, were on the left and believed in a democratic and popular art that lived outside the artistic context.

The moment of luck

In 2005 there was a moment of market euphoria with a series of important purchases by the VAF Stiftung of the German collector based in Italy Volker Feierabend. Later, they were resold (the auction record was set by a work from this very collection, sold by Cambi in 2017 for €27,500), but at that time an important nucleus was put together that dragged critical revaluation. In 2005-06, there was also a major exhibition of the group's rooms at Gnam in Rome. Among the curators, Marco Meneguzzo was the one who rediscovered and enhanced the movement. This stimulated the market, which, however, was not nurtured further and now attention has waned. Above all, the multiplicity of works and the lack of uniqueness represent a difficulty. In Devecchi's case, there is also a lack of a reference gallery, which works with the archive to valorise the work and reconstruct the fragmentation between the various operators.

Silvers at auction

With regard to silverware, after Devecchi's demise in 2011, the company was sold in 2015 to Vhernier, which recently sold to the Richemont group. "That of 20th-century silverware is a segment that suffers from being treated in the market as an appendix to furniture," explains Carlo Peruzzo, a specialist in Cambi's Collectible Silver department. "We since 2019 have separated 20th century silverware from antique silverware and organised dedicated auctions. We are now seeing the results: the market is on the rise'. Devecchi fits into this context, but the prospects are good. 'He comes from an important family of silversmiths and the illustrious Lombard tradition,' explains Peruzzo. "His way of working has privileged form, revealing a designer's approach, for example, in his idea of reflecting his surroundings in the material." At Cambi's last auction, two Slowdrink jugs fetched more than €4,000 from an auction base of €500. The auction record was set by Phillips in New York in 2012 by two coffee pots identical to those in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which sold for just over €6,700 each (they entered the British museum's collection in 2010). Another tea service changed hands in 2013, again in the US, for €3,600, while a 1990 candelabra fetched €2,400 at Wright's in Chicago in 2019. But many pieces can be found between €300 and €1,500: still extremely affordable prices with prospects for growth.