Italian curator Marco Altavilla, renowned for his sharp eye for fresh talent and his unfettered approach to exhibition making, died August 19 following a long illness. News of his death was reported by Italy 24 Press News. Altavilla and his life and business partner Paola Guadagnino opened the art space T293 in Naples in 2002 with the intention of focusing on emerging artists. Occupying a historic building, the project quickly gained a reputation as a locus of research and experimentation. T293 became a commercial gallery in 2006; four years later, Altavilla and Guadagnino moved it to Rome, where it now occupies a disused metal shop in the city’s buzzy Trastevere neighborhood. During the gallery’s two-decade history, the couple consistently sought new ways to contextualize contemporary art, achieving this through a robust program that included various projects and publications as well as traditional gallery shows. T293 played a major role in launching or elevating the careers of artists including James Beckett, Patrizio Di Massimo, Isabella Ducrot, David Maljkovi?, and Lorenzo Vitturi.
Marco Altavilla originally studied art in Bologna. In 2002, with Guadagnino, he cofounded T293 at Via dei Tribunali 293, in the heart of Naples. Shortly after its 2006 transformation to a commercial gallery, a New York Times article noted that Altavilla and Guadagnino were so committed to contemporary art that they rarely showed painting, considering photography and multimedia work to be more wholly of the then-present era. The organizational change enabled T293 to gain an international presence, with the gallery regularly presenting its artists at events including the London and New York iterations of Frieze, Milan’s MiArt, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Art Basel-Art Statements, where it won the prestigious Bâloise Art Prize in 2008, with a solo exhibition of work by Tris Vonna-Michell.
Following T293’s 2010 move to Rome, Altavilla and Guadagnino inaugurated a residency program and began collaborating curatorially with international installations and galleries. As well, the gallery was quick to recognize the value of social media, viewing it as another tool to deploy in the service of their young artists, who have gone on to see their work show in institutions and venues including Tate London; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; and the Venice Biennale, whose forthcoming sixtieth iteration, “Foreigners Everywhere,” takes its title from a 2006 work by the Palermo, Italy–based collective Claire Fontaine, which T293 championed early and often.
Altavilla’s curatorial interests extended beyond art to music, as embodied by “interstices,” his 2003 contribution to ArtSound, a segment of Italy’s larger Music Festival ‘900, and by his occasional curation of “Archivi Privati,” a recurring music event at Bologna’s Raum cultural center. He also wrote critically on music for the art website Exibart.
Preferring the spotlight to shine on the artists he so tirelessly promoted, Altavilla gave few interviews, and public information regarding the curator is limited. Italian website Arttribune pointed to the text with which Altavilla introduced himself on his Instagram profile. “If you want to go fast, go alone,” it read. “If you want to go far, go together.”