Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea

Autobiographical notes:
I’ve been collecting art since my youth, with a preference for Magic Realism and the Roman School.
For over twenty years my main activities have been connected with industrial production of metal tubing – the Columbus company produced the first tubular furniture in the 1930s, based on designs by Breuer, Terragni and Bottoni – and bicycles, under the trademarks Cinelli and Columbus. In this work I have always combined technology with art and design.
In cycling competitions and in the field of design we achieved many goals, thanks to the collaboration of great athletes and outstanding designers.
As sometimes happens to collectors, my friendship with many artists, and in particular with Schifano, Boetti and De Dominicis, led me to open a gallery, after years of experiences with temporary exhibitions and initiatives.
So in 1998 I opened my gallery in Milan, with the precious help of Aloisia Resch, who still runs the gallery with passion and expertise.
Above all, my aim was to promote young artists and to contribute to their growth, directly experiencing the process, no longer watching from behind the scenes but actually taking part.
This is not a “trend” gallery (they became extinct back in the Seventies…), I love painting and I have always though it was unjustly neglected by the Italian system (though not internationally…), but I’m also interested in other media.
I think this is why my gallery has become a reference point, in time, for young Italian art.
I am very proud to have produced a very beautiful show by Schifano with three thousand (!) original retouched photographs, with exhibit design by Luca Pancrazzi. I also recall the group show on the Dutch “Provos”, with original photos by Massimo Vitali from '66, and with many young artists who interpreted the evidence of those nascent student protest movements (in which I was an anonymous foot-soldier). And then the “Black Album”, a show on heavy metal; or the show on the Bulli, the Volkswagen bus, which was also the christening of the magazine “No”  (an initiative of Marco Cingolani, a friend and artist).
Today we are approaching our tenth anniversary, and I am widening the range to include artists from other countries, with the aim of making the gallery more international.