Bridging Worlds

Hosting a foundation and numerous art events in her majestic palace in Venice, she embodies the essence of a true Venetian insider. Chiara's profound passion for history, art, and the rich cultural tapestry of her experiences shapes her unique perspective on life and creativity. Delving into the inspiration Cyprus offers to her collection and philanthropic endeavors, Chiara discusses her approach to supporting various projects and causes.

What continually inspires you in your work?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "Passion for history and art. I am a legal professional and a teacher who has been able to combine jurisprudence with all-round art with a highly creative attitude. History, access to one of the most important private family collections and libraries in the world has allowed me to range from philosophy to architecture, from art to history, from music to politics. All this baggage is a source and source of inspiration in my work and in my everyday life. In fact, I nourished my personal growth and that of my children with bottles of milk and tablets of books. My work also finds inspiration in the curiosity and open and curious approach that I have always had for the different cultures that, while traveling for work or passion, I have had the privilege of encountering in an authentic way and, subsequently, immersing myself in without any prejudice."

Can you share a defining moment in your career that profoundly influenced your path in the art world?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "In 1992, very young, on the occasion of the first exhibition in which I had a very important coordination role between the Marmottan Museum in Paris and Palazzo Diamanti e Massari in Ferrara, alongside Maestro Farina, in the exhibition "Monet and his friends" and subsequently in Strasbourg, alongside the Vice President of the European Parliament, Hon. Roberto Barzanti, for whom I worked on directives and regulations on the circulation of cultural goods in international and European law, I understood that my destiny was marked by this strong duality between law, protection, valorisation of art and its promotion. Subsequently I worked at Christie's International, making use of my skills and as a professor of art and law at Sapienza University, giving rise to a truly new department on the topic, now absolutely present in all law universities. My family origins, together with those of my husband, who have been together for over thirty years, all great collectors of "old master painting" and "Contemporary art" have given me greater awareness of the strength and authority of my path. The most important figures in this are my father and my father-in-law, who passed on to me the sensitivity and flair for recognizing the traits of the most famous artists and valuable living artists to be enhanced in our collection which boasts over half a millennium of life. Having lived between three islands, two of the sea and one of the river, Venice, Sicily and the Ile de France or Paris has endowed me with a vision that I would dare to define as "island" of one who sees the world, including art , with a very particular perspective, I would say intimate and authentic, beyond the apparent noise of the metropolis in which it descends. Architecture and music are my greatest loves, and, in different ways, they have always nourished my wanderings in the world of art, always giving me new and unforgettable experiences."

You've shared your deep connection with Venice and other places like Sicily and Paris. What personal ties or experiences do you have with Cyprus that make it special to you?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "As I said before, I am an incurable islander. I love the silence and the introspective vision that only the island, inside and out, can give. This sort of isolation which for some may seem like a prison, for me instead has the character of freedom and absolute authenticity in looking at things. Cyprus is one of the oldest and most historically rich lands in the Universe, it is the city where Aphrodite and many other Olympian gods, Jupiter, Apollo, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus and Artemis were born. I grew up with a love for classical mythology and archeology and Cyprus is one of the most emblematic places in this sense. But the great bond with Venice, the city where I was born, has the same strength as the fortresses of Nicosia, Larnaca and above all Famagusta which remain perfect, without any enlargement, despite the numerous civil wars which, over the centuries, have been unaware and blameless scenario. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean, after Sicily and Sardinia, places intimately linked to my childhood and the history of our family. In Cyprus I see a lot of the Serenissima Republic of Venice, of a state that dominated for over a millennium throughout the entire basin from the Adriatic to the Ionian Sea, up to the Greek-Turkish coast. In my numerous trips to Cyprus, I started from the history and then delved into its landscapes and its spectacular sea. But the people I met and my relationships with them had a huge impact on me. On my last trip I shot over 18 hours of footage for my next film on the soul of this island far beyond the temporary national airline or companies, trying to highlight the cultural privilege and treasure contained in a dimension of Heritage thousand-year-old that contains, often unconsciously, all of this. For me Cyprus is Cyprus regardless of its Greek or Turkish, English or French, Venetian or classical connotation. I can't help but look at it in its own time, spread over several millennia, far from a historical political geography of the end of the last century. In fact, I have many friends in Cyprus, all people of great culture, of great charisma who have revealed to me the preciousness, each one, of their Cyprus and in this I feel truly blessed, because every time I go to Cyprus, I return to some places and I retrace the path already taken, picking it up where I left off, finding new, precious elements. My film still requires many trips and much study, but I hope, when it is ready, to be able to share with the general public the true and profound historical, landscape and human uniqueness of this large little island on the border between the West and the Orient."

Have you found any particular aspect of Cyprus's art and culture that inspires your work or your collection?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "On the occasion of the Larnaca Biennale, precisely through the artistic journey marked by the presence of numerous international artists selected by the jury, coming from all over the world, I had the opportunity to discover real gems of this island, comparing myself with them and with the community of scholars and critics who came to Cyprus for that occasion. I have thus explored the numerous stories contained in the walls of Cyprus and realities of study and in-depth analysis of great cultural importance. Since 1 May 2004, the entire island of Cyprus has, de facto, been part of the European Union and its inhabitants, without exception, can be European citizens despite its internal division and the first and still existing "green line" demilitarized UN facility. This dichotomy, this strong presence of history from mythology, at the crossroads between the Western European, even British world whose traits are witnessed by a predominantly Anglophone foreign culture, to the Middle Eastern and Asian culture make this island a very important crossroads of culture both for those who were born there and for those who decided to live there. The Donà dalle Rose collection is in fact being enriched with native Cypriot artists as well as others who have stayed there. We are at this moment deciding our support for the Larnaca Biennale with BIAS, the first and only biennial in the world where art, just like Cyprus, is not diminished by its belonging to a nation or nationality (native or conquered or colonial) but is traced back into categorizations that refer to the spirituality of the artist, taking up the principles of Vasily Kandinsky, thus giving rise to different pavilions which take the name of: Abrahamic, Hindu, Buddhist, esoteric, Zoroastrian, shamans, scientific, philosophical, lost religions and the web. For 2005, the Donà dalle Rose Foundation for the next edition of the BIAS, with the organization and creators of the Cyprus Biennale in Larnaca, have decided to join forces by organizing a large Biennale involving both Palermo, Venice and Cyprus and other wonderful islands, from Europe to Africa with a unique Biennale which will bear the title 'Island'."

As a philanthropist, what drives your choice of projects or causes to support?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "It is a choice mixed with intuition, research, empathy, aesthetics, eco-sustainability, choice of materials, philosophy and luck. Numerous projects arrive at the foundation, in some cases introduced by great curators or other museums or important public or private foundations, as well as by the artists themselves who, more daring, write directly seeking a comparison with us. We read all the proposals and do not accept them based on notoriety but on what that artist, painter, sculptor, musician, architect, photographer or performer was able to inspire in all of us, the family and the Foundation's advisors. Obviously this step is not enough. The next one, that of the real meeting with the concrete vision of the portfolio and the project proposed by the proposing individual, which obviously we do not delay in modifying, if necessary, or integrating with other initiatives already in place, aims to generate a lasting, symbiotic union between our family and the artist, becoming testimony and history for the future.

We are far from commercial logic. We prefer to follow the intuition and the steps that distinguished our ancestor, the Doge Leonardo Donà dalle Rose when he welcomed Galileo Galilei on the run and, completely against the grain, financed his first seventy telescopes by giving him asylum in Venice, against everyone's opinion, like the great philosopher Bartolomeo Donà dalle Rose, leader of Neoplatonism who translated numerous Greek texts saved from the fire of the library of Alessandria, and how, more recently, the grandparents Nicolò and Françoise Donà dalle Rose conceived and promoted the well-known town of Porto Rotondo, designing it from nothing and calling now well-known artists of the caliber of Cascella and Ceroli to create the first land art works in Italy, including the little church of San Lorenzo with their silhouettes and those of their children and great-grandparents.

Through culture, I have also had the opportunity to promote charitable initiatives such as research in the medical and scientific fields. Art in the round is a great engine of ideas and activator of interests in which each of us can find our place and best fulfilment."

What initiatives or events are you most excited about this year?

Chiara Donà dalle Rose: "The trip to Cyprus, crossing the green line at the gates of Larnaca to go towards Famagusta thrilled me. I had gathered a lot of information, interviewed at least 12 people with over twelve hours of footage and at least one hundred pages of written script. I left alone; a friend was supposed to come with me who at the last minute at seven in the morning gave me a cancellation out of fear. It was better this way because I took the time to cross that human threshold and savor in silence this journey, within the journey, this island within the island. I recorded with my phone all the thoughts and reflections that came to me while I was driving. I returned home happy with having made this trip and with what it had left me with. I presented myself again to the people I had interviewed in the previous days with a new look. A few days later I left for Senegal, heading for the Partcours exhibition in the streets of Dakar. This experience, even though I had already been to Africa, left a huge mark on me and left very strong emotional traces in my mind. On my way back, passing through Madrid and then Palermo, I accidentally came across some archive photos of Sicily at the beginning of the 1900s. The similarity with today's Dakar was surprising. The carts, the horses, the donkey, the young people, the streets covered with earth and sand, the merchants along the streets, the colour of the fruit and the clothes, the music, and the smiles of the people, often barefoot without shoes, revealed to me a timeless story.

On this trip I investigated the true and ancient language of the most ancient African populations, Pular. I filmed numerous "bambari", the African trumpeters, who sang to me, according to their thousand-year-old oral tradition, the fairy tales of their culture in the traditional language that have resisted all forms of domination. They are fables that contain a moral whose meaning surpasses the threshold of time and of every generation in which the struggle between the sea and the good remains imperishable.

But an indelible memory in my mind is the Sinai desert and the Bedouins of Nuweba and Dahab with whom I shared the BIAS 2018 and numerous projects for the protection of their thousand-year-old tradition."

 From L'Officiel Cyprus Spring Issue 2024