Since the very first years, the Gallery’s philosophy has always been focusing on exhibitions of great ancient and contemporary art masters beside new proposals of talented younger artists, thanks to a stable and carefu7l research in the art world to share with the Gallery’s hometown Bergamo.
The history of Galleria Ceribelli borns thanks to the passion of its founder, Mr. Arialdo Ceribelli, who has invested in research and discovery of original graphics and figurative art, with a general interest in the XX century as scholar first, collector then, to become an expert connoisseur.
From 1965 to 1990 Mr. Ceribelli has been the managing director, in charge for the iconographic research, at the historical publishing house Minerva Italica, actives since 1952 in Bergamo and brand of reference in the panorama of didactics.
Mr. Ceribelli own career began as curator of exhibitions and reasoned catalogues of great ancient and modern engravers.
The opening in 1993 in San Tomaso street in Bergamo, few meters far away from the Carrara Accademy and the GAMeC spaces, took place in the occasion of an important exhibition in the Gallery - the first in Italy - dedicated to the engravings of Lucian Freud, an English master of whom Ceribelli publishing house in 1995 edited, with Craig Hartley, the general catalogue of etchings “The Etchings of Lucian Freud: A Catalogue Raisonné 1946-1995”, published by Alcon Edizioni, Marlborough and Ceribelli.
The Gallery’s manifest has always been stooding out for international contest and a direct connection within the British art world through the years following the London art print market and in parallel hosting Anglo-Saxon artists to dialogue and interchange moments with Italian artists at the Gallery on that time. Among these we find the artists of the Metacosa movement, created in 1979 by Gianfranco Ferroni, Lino Mannocci, Sandro Luporini, Giuseppe Biagi, Giuseppe Bartolini, Bernardino Luino e Giorgio Tonelli.
The valuable friendship, the respect and the intellectual harmony between Ferroni and Mr. Ceribelli have specially marked the whole path of the Gallery that has promoted its research and that is still protecting his work and memory today. The catalogue of engravings edited with Franco Marcoaldi, published by Lubrina, dates back to 2002. In the same year the Gallery produced the movie “La notte che si sposta. Gianfranco Ferroni” directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi and presented at the 59th Venice Film Festival at the Biennale of Venice. In 2006 the raisonne catalogue of lithographs, edited with Chiara Gatti and written by Marco Vallora, was completed. In the following years, Galleria Ceribelli took part in the creation of the retrospective work dedicated to the master from Livorno, held at Palazzo Reale in Milan and at GAMeC in Bergamo too. Vittorio Sgarbi, Luca Ronconi, Alberto Boatto, Silvio Lacasella, Valerio Magrelli, Franco Marcoaldi, Casimiro Porro and Marco Vallora have given their contribution writing in the relevat cataloge (Skira).
Arialdo Ceribelli gave new value to this work through a circuit of exhibitions at the Uffizi museum of Florence (2015), curated by Vincenzo Farinella with written text by Antonio Natali, at Casa Raffaello and at Palazzo Ducale in Urbino (2016) and also at Palazzo Mediceo in Seravezza (2018).
The relationship of great respect and friendship between Mr. Ceribelli and Lino Mannocci, already known in 1968, have risen some exhibitions and publications, four handed organised with the Italian painter, London by adoption, as Gli Amici Pittori di Londra (My Painter Friends in London), held in 2007 in the Gallery in Bergamo, followed in 2008 by the exhibition Genius Loci, in 2010 by Another Country at the Estorick Collection in London, and in 2015 by Vital Signs at the Clifford Chance in London, then presented at the Fondazione Bottari Lattes in Monforte d'Alba. With this Foundation, Ceribelli Gallery boasts a long-lasting collaboration, characterized by photography exhibitions, including the most recent exclusive retrospective in 2018, in the honour of the friend and famous photographer Mario Dondero, also with the support by the Associazione Giulia Falletti di Barolo.
In twenty years of fruitful activity, Ceribelli Gallery has been focusing on the study of art printing and the research of its masters, also by attending to international fairs such as Salon du Dessin et de l'Estampe in Paris, the London Original Print Fair of the Royal Academy, the Fotofever in Paris and the Wopart in Lugano. The reasoned catalogues of the Gallery are in fact linked to the world of engraving. In addition to those, there are also the reasoned catalogues of Freud and Ferroni, the Salvator Rosa. Acqueforti 1615-1673 edited with Olimpia Theodoli in 1992, presented on the occasion of the exhibition at the Castello Comunale di Barolo, and the Manet. Engravings, of 2004, from Alfred Strölin's portfolio. Among the graphic design exhibitions, special attention should be given to the collaboration with the Gabinetto delle Stampe and the Museo Civico delle Cappuccine in Bagnacavallo, where the gallery has contributed, with loans and consultancy, to the anthologies of Max Klinger. Myth and passion at the origins of destiny (2018) e Albrecht Dürer. Il privilegio dell'inquietudine (2019) both curated by Patrizia Foglia and Diego Galizzi.
