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Top Picks of Drawing Biennial 2013 from Valeria Napoleone and Allegra Pesenti

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​On Tuesday 30 April at Drawing Room we were joined by contemporary art collector Valeria Napoleone and curator Allegra Pesenti.

They both talked us through their tops picks from Drawing Biennial 2013. Valeria was most interested in works of pure pencil, pure gestural drawings which went beyond the paper. She picked Ciara Phillips, Haris Epaminonda, Karin Ruggaber, Kerstin Kartscher, Becky Beasley and Leonor Antunes.

Allegra enjoyed the ways in which artists have dealt with the intimacy and vicinity of the smaller scale of a piece of paper. She picked Tonico Lemos Auad, Anna Barriball, Brigida Baltar, Richard Deacon, Francesca Gabbiani-Ruscha, Rachel Goodyear, Cornelia Parker, Alison Wilding and Seb Patane. She also gave a special mention to David Musgrave, Paul Noble and Peter Peri for draughtmanship.

Valeria Napoleone is a contemporary art collector who has developed a significant collection of work by women artists around the world.  She is also an active supporter and patron of the arts, supporting many artists at an early stage of their careers.  She is the recent author of a cookbook Catalogue of Exquisite Recipes, published by Koenig Books and the majority of profits raised from sales will be donated to Down Syndrome Education International.

Allegra Pesenti is Curator at the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She is responsible for researching and curating exhibitions of old master, modern,and contemporary works on paper. Pesenti is also involved in the acquisition of works of art for the Grunwald collection. She studied Renaissance drawing at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and has been involved in the organization of exhibitions of old master drawings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and at the Louvre in Paris. She formerly served as Assistant Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Hammer Museum, she curated Rachel Whiteread Drawings which travelled to Tate Britain, in 2011.

Browse other works in Drawing Biennial 2013 here

Image albums of Napoleone and Pesenti's selections are on our facebook page.

Outset_slectors_evening_lo-resAllegra Pesenti talking through her selection