{"id":179953,"date":"2025-12-12T01:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/179953\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T01:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:30:13","slug":"why-2026-is-a-pivotal-year-for-the-art-market-according-to-massimo-de-carlo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/179953\/","title":{"rendered":"Why 2026 Is a Pivotal Year for the Art Market, According to Massimo De Carlo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"Maurizio<\/p>\n

Portrait of Massimo De Carlo. Photo by Pasquale Abbattista. Courtesy of Massimo De Carlo. <\/p>\n

It was only October, but Massimo De Carlo<\/a>, founder of the gallery named after him, was already reflecting on how the year had gone. \u201c2025 was a resetting year,\u201d he said. After what he calls a \u201cbad\u201d 2024, the eminent dealer has spent recent months fine-tuning how his gallery operates to be \u201cless dependent on the volatility of the market and the volatility of relationships.\u201d The real verdict, he argued, will come in 2026, when it should be clearer whether the market challenges are structural or \u201coccasional.\u201d Are collectors totally recalibrating their buying behaviors, or is the recent slowdown a cyclical dip?<\/p>\n

It is a typically pragmatic stance from the dry-humored dealer who, in the almost four decades since founding his gallery, has watched the art market pendulum swing with as much speed as the fortunes of his beloved soccer team, AC Milan. Since he founded his Milan gallery in 1987\u2014after a detour through pharmacy studies and an early love of avant\u2011garde music\u2014De Carlo has witnessed the art market undergo several permutations. One of Italy\u2019s most influential art dealers, De Carlo represents more than 60 artists, including Maurizio Cattelan<\/a> (who famously taped him to a wall in 1999<\/a>) and Rudolf Stingel<\/a>. His gallery now operates branches in Hong Kong, London, Paris, and an office in Seoul, as well as its original location in Milan. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Exterior view of MASSIMODECARLO Milan. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti Courtesy of MASSIMODECARLO. <\/p>\n

For De Carlo, part of the current recalibration in the market is cultural. The trade grew used to \u201ceasy years,\u201d he noted, and \u201clost\u2026the perception that the art market is capricious.\u201d His gallery\u2019s answer has been to tighten ties with those who matter most: artists, collectors, and institutions. The more those relationships are cultivated, he said, the less the business is buffeted by \u201cvolatility.\u201d <\/p>\n

This effort is not about rethinking the gallery\u2019s ethos, which is marked by a familial atmosphere. \u201cWe were never a corporate gallery,\u201d he said, noting that artists were the key to his business. He used the analogy of publishers, where \u201cthe brand is made by the writers.\u201d Today, he combines decades\u2011long artist relationships with a restless curiosity for new talent, with young names such as Diane Dal-Pra<\/a> and Ludovic Nkoth<\/a> joining the gallery in recent years. \u201cEverything we did, we did for the artists,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Ludovic<\/p>\n

This extends to the gallery\u2019s approach to programming. Each exhibition should be a \u201cspecific experience,\u201d he said. He points to the range of shows in the London gallery, which occupies a charming floor of an 18th-century Mayfair townhouse. Recently, the gallery has mounted a refined Peter Halley<\/a> presentation, before switching tack completely to showcase work by the young painter Lenz Geerk<\/a>: an apt demonstration of the variety in its program. <\/p>\n

De Carlo also likes to switch things up in his other galleries. In Paris, the gallery\u2019s storefront\u2014Pi\u00e8ce Unique\u2014acts like a street\u2011level vitrine. Although there was originally a brick wall facing the street, the architect Kengo Kuma refitted it with a single sheet of glass, collapsing the threshold between city and gallery, turning a small room into a public moment. \u201cIt\u2019s like a niche into the street where you can see art,\u201d he said. In October, the space was the subject of much chatter during Art Basel Paris<\/a>, when it opened Scandi artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset<\/a>\u2019s October 2025 (2025), a striking, hyperrealistic, life-size sculpture of a gallery assistant slumped forward over a large desk. \u201cGallery spaces can influence the possibilities of a show,\u201d De Carlo said. \u201cThe gallery in that moment is a kind of producer.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Elmgreen & Dragset, exterior view of \u201cOctober 2025\u201d at MASSIMODECARLO Pi\u00e8ce Unique. Photo by Thomas Lannes. Courtesy of MASSIMODECARLO.<\/p>\n

The gallery\u2019s precise approach to artists and programming has been a constant throughout the art market\u2019s twists and turns. Today, De Carlo believes the market is becoming \u201cmore serious, with collectors and trends that are less hysterical.\u201d Practically, that means less speculation and more time for collectors to consider purchases. His preferred indicator of success is \u201cmore artworks that go directly from the wall of the gallery to the wall of the houses of the collectors,\u201d rather than into storage. Before COVID, he said, too many pieces disappeared into warehouses. If the current market cycle is slower but more deliberate, it could be healthy, aligning commercial interest with the conviction and desire to live with art.<\/p>\n

But the future is also dependent on the economy, which will have to create the right conditions \u201cto support our vision and the vision of the audience.\u201d De Carlo described himself as a \u201cwell\u2011informed pessimist,\u201d not because he expects the worst, but because the only approach is to see risk clearly and keep moving. \u201cI always say that a pessimistic person is an optimist with a lot of information,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jennifer Guidi, installation view of \u201cPoints on Your Journey\u201d at MASSIMODECARLO Milan, 2025. Photo by Roberto Marossi. Courtesy of MASSIMODECARLO.<\/p>\n

His view of Milan, the city that formed him, illustrates this realism. The city\u2019s advantage, he says, is its cultural density: design, fashion, food, and a surprising concentration of institutions and private foundations\u2014Fondazione Trussardi, Fondazione Prada<\/a>, the Triennale Design Museum<\/a>, the Pirelli HangarBicocca\u2014within a bikeable radius. \u201cThe concentration of all those things makes the city very exciting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yet he doesn\u2019t expect the recent buzz<\/a> around its art scene\u2014with new galleries opening<\/a> and wealthy residents drawn in by Italy\u2019s attractive tax regime<\/a>\u2014to alter local market taste, yet. Milan is \u201ca city that is still linked to some very old values.\u201d He noted that many Milan collectors are most interested in 20th-century Italian artists like Lucio Fontana<\/a>, Enrico Castellani<\/a>, and Piero Manzoni<\/a>, and movements such as Arte Povera<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s still a city that is not really completely connected with what\u2019s going on in the future,\u201d he noted. \u201cI do not think that one or two galleries will change this, but it is important that they think that there is a possibility, and this makes Milan more attractive.\u201d <\/p>\n

As for the future more broadly, De Carlo sees \u201ctwo landscapes:\u201d one is \u201chell;\u201d the other is \u201cwho knows what.\u201d He paraphrased a famous quote, \u201cOnce you are in hell, go on.\u201d \u201cThis is the exciting part of the business,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are in a difficult situation, but we have to go on.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portrait of Massimo De Carlo. Photo by Pasquale Abbattista. Courtesy of Massimo De Carlo. It was only October,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,28334,85,46,7913,105100],"class_list":{"0":"post-179953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-gallery-scene-spotlights","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-market-analysis","18":"tag-massimodecarlo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}