Andrea Festa Fine Art is a contemporary art gallery based in Rome, active in the promotion of emerging and mid-career artists on an international level. Its exhibition program focuses on painting and sculpture, with particular attention to research at the intersection of figuration and abstraction. The gallery also includes Sala Nova, a space dedicated to experimental projects.
I like to say that it was Rome that chose me. It is a complex city, at times cynical and almost indifferent to the extraordinary beauty that surrounds it, and not always open to what is new or to the future. And yet, from the very first moment I set foot there, I fell deeply in love with it — and that feeling has never changed. I could not imagine myself anywhere else.
I believe it will be necessary to rethink models and structures, focusing less on quantity and more on building solid relationships, educating collectors, and adopting a more sustainable and targeted approach.
One of the main challenges will be bridging the gap between visibility and actual collecting: social media has enormously expanded the audience interested in art, but not, in equal measure, the number of real buyers. This puts pressure on the entire system, from galleries to art fairs, which remain essential yet are becoming increasingly costly and risky. I therefore believe it will be necessary to rethink models and structures, focusing less on quantity and more on building solid relationships, educating collectors, and adopting a more sustainable and targeted approach.
I do not have an academic background in art. I began collecting almost by chance, initially as a way of furnishing my home after moving to Rome from Turin, and from there it gradually became something increasingly central to my life. At a certain point, I left my job as a pharmacist and, in 2020, opened the gallery.
I work in a fairly spontaneous way, without planning too far in advance. I am interested in preserving a certain flexibility, leaving room for what I come across and for what genuinely resonates with me.
The choice of artists always begins with a very simple question: is this something I would collect myself? If the answer is yes, that is already a major green flag. As things progress, the human side also becomes essential: being a gallerist is an intense, everyday job, and if there is no good relationship with the artist, everything becomes much more difficult—at times even unsustainable.
