OPERA.

A key word, but also a password, the summary of an idea that’s difficult to put in words, a starting point for an exploration journey. From web fanzine, to startup/agency up to an art gallery, the word “opera” has been the focus of titles and beliefs, plaques and business cards, brainstorming and endless Skype calls. These were the steps of the career and life paths of Erika Grupillo and Federica Ciuci Priori, the cultural operators who transformed their SoapOpera Fanzine about art in all its forms into Opera Ilustration, an agency supporting and promoting art in all its form, and particularly illustration, but also a consultation network for artists, companies and brands.

The pivotal year? 2019, when Opera Illustration gave birth to Da Opera, a “magical place” in via Mario Pichi 9, Milan, where artists meet and clash, an independent art gallery hosting exhibitions, workshops, art classes and talks.

Da Opera connects the world of creatives with the one of collectors, the world of visual arts with the art market: because communication is key and dialogue is art.

What was your personal and shared journey that brought you to launch Da Opera?

Our friendship – and basically our journey together – started back in 2009 at NABA, Milan’s Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, where in 2013 we got our BA in Fashion Design & Communication. We were very lucky because we immediately started working in the field, Erika at independent magazines and subsequently as a fashion producer and I, Federica, in Condé Nast, and a couple of years later as a casting assistant between Milan, London, Paris, and NYC. Anyway, we’ve always felt the need to start a project of our own in parallel with the careers we were embracing, a world that could be tailor-made for us and that would have kept fueling, over the years, all the creativity we had inside. So, in 2014, we launched SoapOpera Fanzine, an independent webzine targeting a female audience of lovers of arts, photography, and fashion. Erika was in London, back then, while I’d literally moved into Glamour’s workplace, and we remember having endless nights and hours of Skype calls brainstorming and building the first issues of SoapOpera!

2019 was the year of the twist: after 6 years of webzine and after having achieved great results and satisfaction with each of our personal careers, we decided – during a weird but epiphanic vacation in Greece – to turn our magazine into an agency.

We’d always curated a section that was completely dedicated to the world of illustration and, over the years, it had become our strong point and, for some clients, a way to scout new artists. So, by the end of 2019, SoapOpera had given birth to Opera, an agency of artists and illustrators but also an advisory studio for companies and brands.

The opening of a space that would have also been available to the public was only the next step and natural evolution of it – to be able to host clients within the physical artworks and give anyone the opportunity to start their own art collection was undoubtedly the final touch of life for the project, what makes it fully breathe.

That’s how Da Opera was born.

“A world that could be tailor-made for us.”

For you, Da Opera and Opera Illustration are a “manifesto”: what do you want to communicate through this manifesto?

We launched Opera Illustration because we noticed a “hole” in the market in Milan’s panorama: it looked like there were no agencies exclusively devoted to illustrators. The best contemporary Italian artists were all represented by foreign agencies or agencies which also managed other types of artistries (photographers, stylists, etc.) or rather, traditional Art Galleries. It looked like there was a lack of dynamic and current connections that could act as a bridge between brands, companies, marketing agencies, and illustrators. A reality preserving both parties, which is so widespread in the rest of Europe, instead!

With our manifesto, we aim at supporting, promoting, and preserving our artists, Opera is a starting point and an opportunity to grow for so many illustrators. It’s a guarantee for research and talent. A link between collectors and creatives, brands and gallerists, and a democratic instrument to convey and incorporate illustration into communication and marketing.

How, also through this exhibition space, would you want to build a bridge between art, culture and modernity, tradition, and experimentation?

The opening of the gallery is what best expresses the essence of OPERA: a community, a live circuit, and a reference for illustrators and clients.

The space, therefore, besides being the operational headquarters of the same agency, is also a rendezvous point where we host small exhibitions for the artists we represent, but also workshops, painting classes, and talks. This allows us to offer all artists around Milan and beyond a magical place where to experiment, sell, purchase, interact and emerge. The artworks you can admire there range from sculptures to illustrations, from paintings to pottery up to design objects. Our main objective is to create a welcoming space where people feel encouraged to purchase unique pieces for affordable costs, in order to enrich their lives and houses and support art, especially the local one.

“a community, a live circuit, and a reference”

What do the works you exhibit in your space have in common?

Initially, it was very hard to establish a unique language, as we’d chosen a selection of 14 artists who were extremely different from one another from a point of view of style, technique, materials, and subjects. Then, everything found its place and the current exhibition is a fluid tale of nuances and colors, perhaps because now we choose our artists with so much care and each of them also mirrors our personal taste.

We can state that the common denominator is the uniqueness and exclusiveness of every single artwork:  altogether it gives off a collective power given by the shapes and colors of the subjects portrayed.

If you could, what author or work (both from the past and the present) would you choose to exhibit in Da Opera?

Probably, the list would be extremely long! Among the huge artists from the past and the contemporary ones we admire and follow, it would be so hard to choose.
Just to name a few: Roberto Ruspoli, Zohar Fraiman, Mia Chaplin, Ines Longevial, Delphine Desane, Emiliano Ponzi, Cecilia Carlstedt… We’ll forever be huge David Hockney fans. However, should we go for a classic, Botticelli’s Venus is actually our favorite color palette! [laugh]

A hidden dream of ours? To launch an “A Casa Da Opera” (at Da Opera’s place) inspired by Villa Santo Sopir by Jean Cocteau.

“A Casa Da Opera”

It’s impossible to answer this, but let me ask you from the bottom of my heart: what does “art” mean to you?

To marry a feeling and turn it into something alive.

To embrace it and collect it means enriching your soul and your life.

What’s the latest thing you’ve discovered about yourselves?

Federica: The surprising and unexpected desire to root and build.

Erika: That I can welcome without rejecting anymore.

“Welcome without rejecting”

What’s your happy place?

Right now? Our gallery! But also the people we love – they are the most beautiful islands.

When we also manage to “experience” them, traveling to beautiful places, then that’s even better! We love traveling very much.

Photos by Johnny Carrano. 

Thanks to mm studio.