Starting in 2019, their strong desire to share the beauty and diversity of Contemporary Italian Art has positioned them as champions of Italian artists. From Graziano Spinosi and Umberto Giovannini to Patrizia Zelano and Basso Cannarsa (and many more), their online gallery is the Home of Italian Art!
Having equipped them with Convelio’s VIPIO tool, our Inventory quoting tool, we are excited to lend our fine art shipping expertise to deliver their artworks with collectors and art lovers around the world! We sat down with Eugenio Cannarsa, CEO of ARTXIT, to discover more...
I come from a family of artists, my mother is a teacher and practices etching and my father is a photographer. In my early adulthood, I studied art in high school and design at the University. I have always been surrounded by artists expressing their creativity through various means from painting, photography, etching and sculpture. I have memories of me staring at this impressive huge canvas of Francis Bacon in Paris or getting lost into the Biennale of Venice while my parents were working or wandering around.
Later in my life I decided to completely change my career and started working within the superyachts industry and Investments, which allowed me to travel the world and meet inspiring people along the way. I have noticed that the diversity and beauty of contemporary Italian art didn't really have a dedicated channel of expression to the world. Often, artists were not able to speak any other language than their native tongue or catch-up with new technologies, it has fuelled my curiosity and my entrepreneurial spirit.
For the past 12 years, every year I would travel back home to Italy and while there, I would visit friends of my family, often artists and see their studios full of artworks sitting there, taking dust or covered by old bed sheets. All these artworks couldn’t see the light of the outside world and I thought “how nice would it be if those artworks could be appreciated by others”. Those observations matured over the years and my family as well as artists I have met through the years pushed me to shape my ideas further and take action… To create ARTXIT, the Home of Italian art.
Well, art is like a tattoo into your soul. If you love art, art will never leave you. I spent my childhood more inside art galleries than playing at the park, so my parents probably had a great influence in my passion for art. Going back to your question, I’m an avid art collector and I just couldn’t pass the opportunity to spend more time meeting new artists, discuss with them and get to know them and their art more intimately.
The way ARTXIT has evolved over this first year has been very organic. Initially, we built a team of renowned Italian art curators and critics to identify a first list of Italian artists to approach and discuss the project with.
As often happening when starting a new venture, the beginning was challenging. But over time, one meeting leading to another, more Italian artists became interested in the project and joined the adventure of ARTXIT. Some have contributed immensely with providing valuable feedback on the platform allowing us to constantly make the user experience better and promoting ARTXIT to fellow Italian artists and collectors. Now, we are at a stage where we are focusing on bringing additional diversity to the platform and increasing our effort in marketing and sales. We are aiming to build a tech company not only an online art gallery.
ARTXIT is about sharing passion for contemporary art originated from Italian artists, it is about keeping art and experiences true and authentic.
Authenticity. Our artists are bringing authenticity through their work and the relationships they build with our audience. Also, uniqueness. They are providing unique artworks that are only available through our platform. Finally, access to their world and creative process – we have collaborated with artists to bring our clients inside the home or the studio!
I think the art industry is similar to other industries that I have been involved in and they don’t like change. I have seen the art industry landscape evolving from more traditional channels to online and more disruptive ways of promoting art. The pandemic has accelerated the need for a change and allowed the rise of more diversity outside of the usual channels (online purchase only, use of cryptocurrency for purchasing art…). More recently, with NFT which is a very interesting new way of considering art, and we have been watching this space closely.
Convelio has a unique approach in the art landscape: its range of services, the simplicity of the shipping process, its involvement in the art industry landscape and its ability to bring added value to it, all of those, drew us to Convelio . When growing ARTXIT, we wanted to make sure that the shipping would be handled in a secure and simple way so that our clients would feel safe to purchase through our platform and, on our end, we would feel at ease that the artworks' shipping was going as smoothly as possible.
We have been happy to notice the level of involvement and care Convelio has shown since Day 1. It has been a good surprise than to discover how simple shipping could be when the right services and the right attention is brought to the table.