The biggest commercial art dealer in the U.S. has opened a modern art gallery in Rome, a city better known for its classical and Renaissance art.
The Gagosian Gallery, located in central Rome in an ornate commercial building constructed in 1921, opened this weekend with an exhibit devoted to Cy Twombly.
Twombly is showing three huge new paintings from a series called Three Notes from Salalah, described as a homage to Arabic art.
Twombly, a Virginia-born artist who now lives in Italy, is known for abstract works that incorporate repetitive lines, graffiti, letters and words.
It is the seventh art gallery owned by Larry Gagosian, an American who opened his first gallery in New York in 1979 and now has galleries in London and Beverly Hills.
"I am delighted to open a gallery in Rome, a powerful source of inspiration for artists of all times. We look forward to becoming part of the cultural life of this extraordinary city," Gagosian said at the opening Saturday.
The former commercial building, redesigned by local architects Firouz Galdo and London partnership Caruso St John, is now stripped to the bare walls with a grey Pietrasanta stone floor in a style similar to Gagosian's other galleries.
Gagosian began his art career selling posters and cultivated a stable of "super collectors" with his first gallery in New York.
He represents contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, Edward Ruscha, Cecily Brown, Andy Warhol and Richard Wright and was named this November by ArtReview magazine as the second most powerful man in the modern art world.
Gagosian said he believes that Rome is a "sleeping giant" in the market for contemporary art, despite its roots in more historic forms of art.
The gallery is down the street from Rome's gallery of contemporary art, which has been under construction for the past four years.
The National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, designed by Iraqi born architect Zaha Hadid, is now set for a 2009 opening.
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