A portrait of Umberta Beretta – philanthropist, art collector and LUX Contributing Editor – in situ

Philanthropist, collector and LUX Contributing Editor Umberta Gnutti Beretta is one of the leading lights of the Italian contemporary cultural scene.  As the 2026 Biennale takes off, the guest editor of our Venice Biennale Special section, who has a must-see private art space at her family’s factory in Brescia, shares her thoughts on contemporary artists she admires who have studied and created in Venice.

She also nominates four luminaries in the city’s cultural scene, who in turn share their thoughts on their creative and collecting practices, and on the latest artistic transformation of La Serenissima

Venice is historically the home of the events within the contemporary art ecosystem. Although the exhibition takes place every two years, the reasons that position Venice as a central hub for artists extend far beyond this recurring occasion.

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The city welcomes artists not only as visitors or privileged observers, but also as students and researchers. The Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia has long represented a fundamental educational context for many contemporary artistic practices. Among the artists who have developed a significant part of their trajectory there and who I admire are Giulia Andreani, Iva Lulashi and Marta Spagnoli, just to name a few.

Back to Earth, 2024, by Anastasiya Parvanova

For some, Venice does not remain a temporary experience, it becomes an existential and professional choice, a place in which to live and create.

Within this context, a visit to the walk-up studio of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, a native of Venice, is a key to understanding the profound relationship between artistic practice, urban space and the lagoon environment. Giorgio Andreotta Calò has spent time in Berlin and Amsterdam, but his studio remains in Venice.

Another Venice native is Chiara Enzo, a young painter who brings into her painting the dampness and the dim light of her city. Trained, like many others, in the classrooms of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, she has the ability to enchant you with her small canvases.

She was invited by curator Cecilia Alemani to take part in the Biennale The Milk of Dreams in 2022, and it was precisely there that I noticed her. I have not yet walked through her studio, but it sits firmly on my wish list: a room I do not yet know, and that I cannot wait to discover.

Calipso (Summer Solar Power), 2021, by Thomas Braida

And then there is Thomas Braida. He lives and works in Venice but was born in Gorizia, a borderland between Italy and Slovenia. He carries with him that silent geography. Extremely reserved in speech (he weighs his words), on canvas he opens up without restraint and his gesture becomes his narrative.

Anastasiya Parvanova comes from Bulgaria, where she studied visual arts and pedagogy. Venice welcomed her later, and she stayed.

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She paints spaces that do not exist, marginal presences, subjects that usually escape the eye, dreamlike universes. In her work, the invisible finds form. Just some of the fantastic painters to be discovered through the narrow calles of this magnificent city.

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Adele Re Rebaudengo, President of the Venice Gardens Foundation

Adele Re Rebaudengo – President, Venice Gardens Foundation

The foundation of Adele Re Rebaudengo has restored both the Royal Gardens of Venice and the Convent Garden of the Most Holy Redeemer, with both open to the public

In 2010, I moved to Venice to devote myself gardens. In 2014, I co-founded the Venice Gardens Foundation to restore gardens in difficulty, bringing them back to their beauty.

The restored gardens of the Capuchin friars of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, Guidecca

This is not only to protect the city’s landscape, botanical and architectural heritage, but to affirm the fundamental role that gardens play in a community. Seeing gardens cared for by the Foundation now used again with joy and love fuels my commitment. As living beings, gardens should not be neglected, but accompanied along their path of growth with care and attention.

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Italy is known for the art of gardening, a body of knowledge that combines aesthetics, culture and a passionate understanding of nature. It is a heritage of contemporary relevance, telling the story of the symbiotic relationship between ourselves and the landscape.

The restored Royal Gardens of Venice, adjacent to San Marco

Being heirs to this history brings a responsibility to preserve, expand and pass it on. Gardens are more than ornamental spaces: they unfold horizons – of life, memory and relationships, giving communities a greater opportunity for wellbeing than any other space.

In Venice, there are many gardens to rediscover, sheltered behind high walls, concealed within ancient palace courtyards or scattered among the narrow streets. They represent a precious presence for the city and help ensure its balance and harmony, but many require conservation work to continue to occupy their central place in the Venetian urban fabric. No community exists without a space to inhabit, because it is itself a dimension, a place; by restoring green areas, we give it the opportunity to take root. Even if gardens do not seem functional, they are essential.

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Petra de Castro with Vladimir Kartashov in his Pietrasanta atelier

Petra de Castro – Patron, collector and writer

Among her current projects, Petra de Castro has a new book and is supporting Vladimir Kartashov’s installation “Sequences of Time” at San Clemente, Venice, during the Biennale

Each time I ask myself where my passion for literature, art and music comes from, the images that come to my mind are those when, aged seven or eight, I would spend twilight afternoons at the home of a very old couple, who had lost their newborn baby during the Second World War and had “adopted” me as a kind of granddaughter.

It was this couple who taught me that music must be listened to attentively, who would sit me by their gramophone to listen to Mozart and who took me to the opera to see Madama Butterfly.

Petra de Castro’s home with works by Jean-Marie Appriou and a ceiling painting by Kartashov (represented by Gowen, Geneva, since 2025)

They had me read the stories of Tolstoy out loud, and look at the paintings of Cézanne, Monet and Renoir, tell them what I saw in the paintings and then copy them.

Those days of a faraway past made me understand that the universe of literature, art, music and the humanities corresponded to my own emotional understanding. I went on to study French modern literature, German and Philosophy. I did theatre and played the piano.

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I worked in dramaturgy at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt. I did graphic and event design, and window settings for a renowned Swiss watch manufacturer. I wrote a book about Pier Paolo Pasolini’s summer journey of 1959, La Lunga Strada di Sabbia, to be published this September.

From being an art lover I became an art patron and collector, with a vision of a Gesamtkunstwerk of my own in Venice, for my private art collection, Antigone’s Tales, to find a home. The idea of storytelling within the works in my collection is very much interweaved with the history of Venice and with the theme of Vladimir Khartashov’s installation, “Sequences of Time”. This Gesamtkunstwerk will be my life’s achievement and I trust in the process.

Nicoletta Fiorucci – Founder, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation

Collector Nicoletta Fiorucci founded her eponymous foundation to promote experimentation in art focusing on radical, interdisciplinary and community-oriented ideas, with a Venice venue opened in 2025

I am drawn to artists who sense shifts in culture, intangible or unresolved. In a moment defined by speed and distraction, art can offer a tempo that encourages reflection instead of consumption. Artists help us rehearse possible futures and the foundation’s aim is to offer a space where artists feel supported to take risks.

The exterior of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, a former 15th-century palazzo in Dorsoduro

Living in Venice has always been my dream. The city has always been shaped by exchange: of goods, cultures, ideas. That openness feels essential to contemporary artistic dialogue.

Venice also embodies urgency – questions of climate change and preservation are tangible.

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The city demands sensitivity to vulnerability, water, light, material decay, to histories layered over centuries. This rhythm aligns with my desire to create exhibitions that unfold gradually.

The foundation is based in Dorsoduro, which has a quieter rhythm. That intimate scale has shaped the exhibitions. Visitors stay longer, artists feel comfortable inhabiting the space.

To Love and Devour, 2025, by Tolia Astakhishvili, exhibition view of a site-specific installation at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Architecture, light and community become part of the exhibition. The experience feels like entering into a shared moment – that sense of closeness has been a rewarding discovery. I see the foundation’s role as contributing to the city’s ongoing narrative, and to an inclusive, forward-looking cultural environment.

Each project adds a layer to the foundation’s evolving identity. The new exhibition from May to November is by Lydia Ourahmane, curated by Polly Staple. Lydia’s practice often engages with invisible systems that shape everyday life.

Her work carries political depth and emotional subtlety – particularly resonant in Venice. I hope visitors will feel invited to slow down and reflect.

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A portrait of Luca Bombassei, an architect who synthesises the ancient and contemporary

Luca Bombassei – Architect, entrepreneur and collector

The practice and projects of Luca Bombassei operate at the intersection of past and future, exemplified in his recently acquired and restored apartment in the Palazzo Contarini Corfù, which overlooks the Grand Canal

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I love the past for its belief in knowledge, interested in the future as a space of experimentation, new ways of living, new cultural models. In my work, the two coexist.

A main bedroom view, with art by Alex Katz and Ettore Sottsass

What excites me is what sits between definitions. I’m working on initiatives where architecture becomes a framework for cultural exchange rather than a finished object; projects where the past is not idealised, but questioned and activated. I don’t work with nostalgia but with memory – there’s an important difference.

Collecting art and supporting projects is a way of staying intellectually alive, I’m drawn to works that take risks, which may feel uncomfortable at first, but are grounded in intelligence, craft and intention. My goal is not to build a “collection”, but a constellation of projects, places and relationships that reflect how I think and live. If there is a method it’s to avoid repetition, stay alert and accept that coherence is not a value in itself; what matters more to me is intellectual honesty.

A living-room view of Luca Bombassei’s Venetian apartment, with metal bookcase by Bombassei and painting by Nathlie Provosty

Living in Venice has taught me nothing truly belongs to you. A palazzo is not a trophy, it’s a responsibility. I’ve learnt that beauty is something you practise every day, through care, use and attention. Venice also teaches restraint: knowing when to intervene and when to step back.

The city itself is a lesson in adaptability – it has survived by absorbing change intelligently. Its future lies not in nostalgia, but in cultural work, education and long-term thinking. I believe Venice can be a laboratory for ideas, a place where history and contemporaneity challenge one another. That tension keeps the city, and my work, alive.

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Italian art collector and philanthropist Umberta Beretta

Italy’s contemporary art scene is blooming. After decades of being perceived as a museum of the past, the home of the Renaissance is experiencing another rebirth under a new generation of philanthropists, curators and collectors. Guest editor Umberta Gnutti Beretta introduces and curates some of the key figures on the new Italian scene for LUX’s Italy Art Focus series

Art philanthropy has been a part of Italian culture since before the time of the Medici. It is a tradition that is not incentivised by tax breaks, as it is in countries including the US, but it is very prominent all the same. It is for this reason that we see the significant and powerful exercises of Italian philanthropy that we are showcasing in LUX.

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Italian philanthropy happens among all generations including the young. We can see this in the case of Edoardo Monti, who was 26 and living in New York when, in 2017, he decided to move back to Italy, to a family palazzo in Brescia, to start the Palazzo Monti residency.

Umberta Beretta with Edoardo Monti at Spazio Almag

We are also seeing the increasing role of women. There is Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, who supports contemporary artists and whose team curates art for everyone to enjoy. There is Gemma De Angelis Testa, who created ACACIA, an association of friends of Italian art, and who has donated 105 works to Ca’ Pesaro Gallery in Venice from her private collection. Giovanna Forlanelli Rovati opened the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, named after her late father-in-law, recently adding an art museum showing Etruscan and contemporary art. Beatrice Trussardi runs the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi as a nomadic project that creates exhibitions in often forgotten spaces and places. L’Espresso magazine did a story on all of us: the mecenate, female patrons of the new Italian art revolution.

Umberta Beretta with artist Jenny Holzer

Despite its rich art history, Italy is not a leader in the contemporary art world in terms of money – most auction activity is in London, New York, Paris or Asia. But in terms of seeing art, everyone wants to come to Venice or Milan or Florence. The quality here is very high. We have artists such as Maurizio Cattelan
, who stands out in the contemporary art scene, and Lucio Fontana in modern art history, but there is so much more. Paola Pivi and Marinella Senatore are very interesting, and there are rising stars like video artist Diego Marcon, transspecies performance artist Agnes Questionmark and industrial artist Arcangelo Sassolino.

Umberta Beretta with Arcangelo Sassolino and Paolo Repetto

In addition to hosting foundations, Italian cities have become places for contemporary artists from around the world to live and work. Danish artist Leonardo Anker Vandal is in Brescia; Ignasi Monreal from Barcelona and
Thelonious Stokes from Chicago live and work in Florence; and Ukrainian artist Daria Dmytrenko is in Venice. As well as being the location of the Palazzo Monti residency, Brescia is the Italian Capital of Culture this year. And Florence has the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, where Arturo Galansino has created a world-class art museum. So artists can come to Italy and take a look at what surrounds them, old and new, and be inspired. It’s different, in my view, from going to a loft space in New York and taking a look around that.

Umberta Beretta with artist duo Gilbert and George

Our very strong commercial galleries include Massimo de Carlo, and kaufmann repetto by Francesca Kaufmann and Chiara Repetto, both in Milan. In my Brescia hometown, Massimo Minini opened Galleria Massimo Minini in 1973.

Read more: An Interview with Maurizio Cattelan

He is a great gallerist and has a long history of friendship with amazing artists, including artists of the Arte Povera of the 1960s. The art scene in Italy is very old, but it is also very new. It’s an exciting time both in Italian art and Italian art philanthropy.

Umberta Gnutti Beretta is a philanthropist who supports work in fields of medicine, women and children’s rights and the arts. Among many roles, she is on the governing council of the Fondazione Brescia Musei and is President of the Restoration Club of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli.

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This article comes from a section of a wider feature originally published in the Autumn/Winter 2023/24 issue of LUX

Nicholas Party portrait, 2022

In our ongoing online monthly series, LUX’s editors, contributors, and friends pick their must-see exhibitions from around the globe

Umberta Beretta, philanthropist, art collector and curator

I would recommend Nicolas Party’s exhibition at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milano. I am directly involved and partially sponsored the exhibition. It is called Triptych. Nicolas party produced eleven new works all inspired by the old masters at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum. The exposition has been organised in partnership with Kaufmann Repetto gallery and will run until the end of June. In the museum Nicolas Party was especially impressed by Mariotto Albertinelli‘s triptych. The exhibition is very respectful of the museum but very connected to the surrounding works.

Nicolas Party’s exhibition at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan is showing until June 27 2022

Together with the triptychs, the artist created six oval works inspired by his beloved Rosalba Carriera, an author also present in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum. This exhibition is a chance to see how contemporary art can very well be inspired by the works of the past and of how a brilliant contemporary artist can create something totally new whilst giving homage to the ancient.

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The artist has been very generous with sharing what inspired him and by making some very clear references that can be followed whilst looking at the exhibition. It is a great chance to see something new and discover something old at the same time.

Cheryl Newman, artist, curator and photography consultant

I’m running a workshop in Norway in a couple of weeks so will finally get inside the 60-meter-high new Munch Museum on Oslo’s trendy waterfront. Love it or hate it, this recycled concrete and steel sustainable building is a long-awaited landmark and new home for the enormous collection of Norway’s greatest painter.

Munch museum, Oslo

Munch was a progressive and challenging artist, so it seems apt that his new home should incite a bit of debate. I have been moved by Munch’s depictions of loneliness and death since my student days, so I’ll head straight to the Sick Child paintings. Munch’s work is unflinching and confronts the fragility and anxiety of human consciousness which is as relevant now as when Munch was a contemporary.

One of Munch’s most renowned paintings ‘The Scream’ on display at the Munch museum

It’s also interesting to see Munch shown with artists directly influenced by his work and if you are in Vienna before June 19th, In Dialogue at The Albertina includes work by Peter Doig, Tracy Emin, Georg Baselitz and Marlene Dumas that refer to Munch’s themes and you can see profound responses by the artists included.

Tracey Emin’s work on display at the ‘In Dialogue’ exhibition at The Albertina in Vienna

Closer to home, I am yet to visit artist and activist Poulomi Basu’s powerful work, Fireflies at Autograph gallery in London. Poulomi is a powerful force, advocating for the rights of marginalised women through political documentary and complex storytelling. Her unflinching images are at once both dreadful and seductive. Curated by Bindi Vora, in this multimedia exhibition, Poulomi turns the camera on herself and her mother, to express patriarchal violence, resistance and solidarity with her female subjects. I am expecting a challenging and provocative exhibition.

Poulomi Basu’s ‘Fireflies’ at Autograph

I’ll also be heading to a group show at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow, a free public gallery that supports local emerging artists. ME 2 U: A Collective Manifesto is a lesson in how to maintain a healthy positivity in the complex world we inhabit. It will include a young painter whose work I love, Lindsey Mclean.

Lindsey Mclean’s ‘Faux Stairs’ showing at Bow Arts

Lindsey’s work disrupts the historical representation of femininity and women in painting. She uses recurring motifs such as fans, veils and feather boas to obscure the gaze within the work. Her paintings are rich and complex, mixing textures and jewel like colours.

Candida Gertler OBE, Co-Founder, Co-Director and Trustee at Outset Contemporary Art Fund

My best kept secret for the most rewarding visit to any Biennale is to go after the opening week! It’s true, you might miss the glamorous opening parties and the opportunity to see many familiar faces from around the globe, but you are abundantly compensated by the unparalleled experience of enjoying art the way it’s meant to be seen – with enough space to breathe!

Simone Leigh’s ‘Brick House’ on show as part of ‘The Milk of Dreams’ at the Venice Biennale

Having just returned from my first art trip with Outset Partners (a philanthropic body that grants experimental forms of funding to transformational projects) since the start of the pandemic, my fears of being confronted with the ‘same old, same old’ whilst in an entirely different, post-pandemic world were allayed. The 59th Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, addresses our collective desire to reconnect to the basic elements – even bringing a field of fragrant earth into the display- and embraces in some of the pavilions and external exhibitions technology in all its augmented and extended forms (a characteristic that defines our ‘new normal’) giving us a insight into the nee phygital era.

Loukia Alavanou, still shot from ‘Oedipus in Search of Colonus’

The Milk of Dreams exhibition in the Arsenale is the most elegantly curated exhibition I can remember in a long time. Each section of the long stretch of installations felt like a fully formed museum show in its own right, giving the – mainly female – artists the consideration and attention to detail that both they and the public deserve. Between the main exhibition, the national pavilions, and the collateral programme, just the right mix of well established and emerging artists were represented: from Barbara Kruger’s temple-like installation of warning texts Untitled (Beginning/Middle/End) in her signature style in the Arsenale, to the fantastic Greek Pavilion Oedipus in Search of Colonus by Loukia Alavanou. There – equipped with my goggles and a swivelling chair to anchor me – I took my front row, immersive seat to a mesmerising journey where ancient Greek tragedy meets futuristic virtual reality.

Although there is so much more to choose from the collateral programme – like the monumental Kiefer exhibition at the Palazzo Duclae; the wonderful Parasol Unit show at the Music Academy with Oliver Beer’s fantastic musical installation in the palazzo’s chapel; and the Ugandan and the Côte d’Ivoire Pavilions scattered around Venice – for me, the one unmissable exhibition is Udo Kittelmann and Taryn Simon’s exquisite Human Brains: It all Begins with an Idea at the Fondazione Prada.

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The design alone of this mammoth endeavour deserves a whole pride of golden lions, and the way the curation traverses the centuries of brain research through the lense of artists, illustrators, scientists and writers left me feeling equal parts satisfied and eager to learn more – like a student and a scholar simultaneously. Just as the entire biennale was a journey between the known and unknown, what more can one ask for

Clara Hastrup, artist

As I’ll be traveling to Copenhagen at the end of this month, the exhibition I’m really looking forward to seeing is Haegue Yang: Double Soul at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark (until July 31). Yang has an incredible visual language and works with a wide range of materials to create her sculptures and immersive environments.

Haegue Yang’s ‘Double Soul’ at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

She uses everything from venetian blinds, bells, drying racks to pompoms and artificial flowers, transforming and abstracting these familiar objects into surreal and chaotic landscapes where you can either get lost or find new meanings.

LUX Editorial Team

This month we suggest visiting the White Box gallery at the Nobu Hotel London Portman Square. Currently on show are the works and submission statements of the winner and runners up of the Louis Roederer Photography Prize.

The Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability exhibition at The White Box space at Nobu Hotel London Portman Square. On show until May 29 2022.

The winner of the inaugural Prize is Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, who’s works come from her collection ‘Behold the Ocean’, where she focuses on the detrimental effects of ocean acidification. Runner up Jasper Goodall’s use of colour and light in his photographs, bring you into a fairy-tale like landscape evoking reverence for nature. Adu-Sanyah’s and Goodall’s works are juxtaposed with Sahab Zaribaf’s meditations on the relationship between humans and nature.

Bellini’s Pietà at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, which Beretta helped restore

The role of philanthropy has never been more urgent, and is reflected in our ongoing online series. Here, Umberta Beretta outlines her work around women’s rights and art for the many

Beretta was born into a family of prominent industrialists in northern Italy and is married to Franco Beretta, who leads the famed gunmakers. For the past two decades she has been active in fund-raising for numerous non-profit organisations and foundations with a focus on art, including her work for the Italian pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale and the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan; medical charities, including cancer research through the Fondazione Beretta, of which she is a board member, and the Essere Bambino foundation; and on social causes such as campaigning against violence against women. The Beretta family’s involvement in art is notable also for Christo’s 2016 project The Floating Piers, which connected the shore of Lake Iseo with the island of San Paolo, owned by the Berettas, with fabric-covered walkways.

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LUX: Where did your interest in philanthropy in the arts come from?
Umberta Beretta: I have always had an interest in the arts. My father Giorgio Gnutti often took me to museums or when visiting artists’ studios. My grandmother (on my mother’s side) pushed me to do volunteer work. Art is my passion and the time I dedicate to less fortunate people or causes is my way of giving back.

Umberta Beretta photographed by Lady Tarin

LUX: Which art projects are exciting you?
Umberta Beretta: The past year has been very complicated and frustrating, but I very much look forward to the Venice Biennale [due to take place 23 April to 27 November 2022] curated by Cecilia Alemani. I admire women who do well in the arts. My hometown of Brescia and Bergamo will be Italian Capital of Culture in 2023, so we are planning a series of cultural activities and that’s quite exciting.

LUX: How important are private and philanthropic support for the arts?
Umberta Beretta: They’re both crucial. In Italy this still has yet to be fully understood. Individuals should be given more tax incentives [to donate]. But it is in our culture to promote beauty so against all odds I think Italy will always be a motor for the arts.

Beretta with the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama

LUX: How has the pandemic affected the arts in Italy?
Umberta Beretta: Tourists will always come to visit our museums. What concerns me most is the impact the pandemic will have on young, lesser-known artists, whose opportunities have frozen. And the same can be said for emerging fashion designers.

Read more: Meet the new generation of artisanal producers

LUX: What else can be done to support women’s rights?
Umberta Beretta: We can start by educating our children. I try with my son every day. All boys should be taught to respect women and all girls should be taught to demand respect. Women have the right to express themselves freely like men. In the art world, for example, women should be free to express their views on sexuality without scaring the public away. In everyday life they should be able to be mothers and have a career at the same time.

Beretta with the artist Christo in his New York studio

LUX: What project has pleased you most?
Umberta Beretta: Definitely Christo’s Floating Piers. Winning the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award in 2015 for Italy. Restoring some of the masterpieces of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli through the Restoration Club… I could go on.

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This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 Issue.