The art and the wine

Gallery Continued: after cinemas and abandoned factories here is art in the cellar

One wonders how they manage to intercept the trendiest artists but also to choose young promises without ever missing a beat. Courage, some would say, certainly a flair and a great desire to go beyond the usual schemes.

Those at Continua like, for example, to make out-of-the-ordinary projects and place their works in somewhat unusual places. And after cinemas, abandoned factories, five-star hotels, a cellar could not be missing. What the heck, a super cellar! This time close to home, in Tuscany, in the heart of Chianti.

Philippe Austruy and Tenuta Casenuove

But it took a somewhat special guy to understand the value of the mix between great wines and contemporary art. We are talking about Philippe Austruy: entrepreneur, art collector and lover of good wine, who in 2015 fell in love with Tenuta Casenuove, the extraordinary Tuscan landscape where vines, olive trees and cypresses coexist and, of course, Chianti.

Soon said, Austruy, patron and owner of various wonderful wine estates in France, Portugal and Italy, after the purchase he set 'his' model of estate, starting an important restructuring both in the architectural part and in the over one thousand hectares of vine .

A landscape that respects biodiversity

Rule number one, the return to tradition, to a care of the vines that is as natural as possible and carried out with the help of a team of experts in defining a landscape that respects biodiversity, capable of evoking the heritage of a territory that gave birth to the great artists of the Renaissance.

Precisely art, understood as an added value, as an essential necessity to create beauty and harmony. But beware, contemporary art has its own codes and languages. And Austruy turned to those 'bad boys' at Continua because he knew they would help him find the right path.

The Roots of Art

This is how, almost like a bet, the project shared by Austruy and Gallery Continua was born: Le Radici dell'Arte.
The idea was to invite the chosen artists to visit the place so that they could capture the atmosphere of a very special space and find a way to merge their research and their languages into the estate.

The title has a double meaning: the roots refer to the origins, the culture and the land of origin.

Furthermore, they evoke man who dialogues with nature to gather its best fruits – grapes – while expressing the need for a profound and rooted expression in man in search of improvement and understanding of the meaning of life.

The artists of the first edition of The Roots of Art

For its first edition, Le Radici dell'Arte, in addition to the exhibition of Susana Pilar and a first permanent installation signed by Pascale Marthine Tayou ( both in the images of this service), produced a temporary exhibition of Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, set up in the Sala delle Volte of the estate in collaboration with the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum, a mural installation on the facade of the Il Vino dell'Arte exhibition space in Panzano and an exhibition conceived by Loris Snipers.