Belmond is proud to announce the third edition of its artistic series MITICO, in partnership with Galleria Continua, featuring six site-specific large-scale installations by one internationally acclaimed contemporary artist - Daniel Buren. Launching in February 2024, six original, never seen before commissions by the French master will be on show at six of Belmond’s most legendary properties, including Copacabana Palace, A Belmond Hotel, Rio de Janeiro; Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town; Hotel Cipriani, A Belmond Hotel, Venice; La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel, Mallorca; Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, Florence; and Castello di Casole, A Belmond Hotel, Tuscany. 

MITICO first launched in 2022 at four of Belmond’s Italian properties, followed by an expanded 2023 global line-up with works by six artists featured in Mallorca, Sicily, Florence, Tuscany, and Oxfordshire. In 2024, MITICO continues to place Belmond’s captivating portfolio under different artistic lenses, tapping into each destination’s individual essence and beauty. Heritage and artistic dialogue have been at the core of the brand’s vision since its inception in 1976. Over time, Belmond has built an exceptional and ever-growing art collection at its global properties. By dedicating the 2024 MITICO series to Daniel Buren, a major figure in international contemporary art and art theorist in international contemporary art, Belmond and Galleria Continua invest in the continued preservation of artistic heritage and push the boundaries of shared cultural moments for visitors and guests alike. 

THE 2024 MITICO CULTURAL CALENDAR 

MITICO 2024’s cultural programming will kick off from February 2024 with Mount Nelson, to coincide with the property’s 125th anniversary year and Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with whom the hotel has collaborated to curate exhibitions displaying African talent in its halls. Next, Copacabana Palace will unveil its installation immediately after the city’s globally renowned Rio Carnival. In the Spring, Hotel Cipriani will launch its installation during the Venice Art Biennale, ahead of Villa San Michele in Florence, where Leandro Erlich’s installation from the first edition resides “Window & Ladder”. Last to launch are Castello di Casole, found hidden further within the Tuscan countryside, surrounded by 4,200 acres, and La Residencia in Mallorca, where the second year of their “Artist in Residencia” programme returns. 

AN ARTISTIC LEGEND’S PERSPECTIVE ON BELMOND’S GLOBAL ICONS 

Daniel Buren enters a dialogue with Belmond’s hotels in Brazil, South Africa, Italy, and Spain, incorporating unrivalled majestic views, opulent gardens, and century-old facades as inspiration for his creations. The French artist will offer a new perspective on these iconic panoramas. 

For fifty years, Daniel Buren has deployed a radical body of work that engages the viewer in a profound transformation of their perception. Through his iconic in situ works worldwide, the artist develops an artistic practice where the piece becomes inseparable from the space in which it is placed, revealing its hidden dimensions. Daniel Buren’s artistic work, theoretical reflection, and modes of intervention have changed the perception of contemporary art, testifying to the artist’s commitment to the fundamentals of perception, as well as color and light as primary mediums, inviting a feeling of enjoyment through experimentation. 

Central to Buren’s oeuvre is the notion of in situ, which he has explored since 1965. This concept looks at how an artwork is born from the space in which it is placed. The work’s full meaning cannot be separated from its presentation site, within and for which it is conceived. Through his in situ works, Buren transforms the space, encouraging viewers and passers-by to see it in a new light. At the heart of the artist’s work is the moment of ‘revelation’ which invites the viewer to see things differently, to perceive what might not have been perceived before, to grasp the invisible. In 2024, Buren will bring his expansion of the visual field and his experimentation with space to Belmond. 

Images of the 2024 MITICO hotel spaces here and artist’s portrait here. 

ABOUT GALLERIA CONTINUA 

GALLERIA CONTINUA opened its doors in San Gimignano in 1990, the brainchild of three young friends who began their adventure in a space on Via della Rocca, in this village in the heart of Tuscany, with the aim of bringing contemporary art to a rural setting, far from the hustle and bustle of the metropolises and major cultural centres. The name of the gallery was born of the desire of the three founders to enhance the link between past, present and future, an ambition shared by all the spaces opened by the gallery around the world over the years. 

GALLERIA CONTINUA has expanded over the last thirty-two years and now has eight sites on five continents. It was the first foreign gallery with an international programme to open in China in 2004, before inaugurating its Les Moulins space in the Paris countryside three years later, a monumental showcase for major interventions and exhibitions. In 2015, the gallery embarked on a new journey to Havana, Cuba, with the aim of transcending all types of borders. In 2020, the gallery opened a new exhibition space in Rome, inside the St. Regis Hotel, as well as another in Brazil, in the Pacaembu sports complex (São Paulo), an inclusive space far removed from the canons of the white cube gallery. In 2021, the gallery moved to the heart of Paris, in the Marais district, with an exhibition space, a grocery shop offering exceptional products from all the countries where the gallery is based, and an ice-cream counter by Gelateria Dondoli. Also in 2021, the gallery opened a new space in Dubai, at the Burj al-Arab, an iconic sail-shaped building located near Jumeirah beach. 

www.galleriacontinua.com 

INSTAGRAM:  galleriacontinua 

ABOUT DANIEL BUREN 

Born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Daniel Buren lives and works in situ. From 1960 onwards, he developed a radical style of painting that played on both the economy of means employed and the relationship between the work and its exhibition space. In 1986, he created the in situ (site-specific) work Les Deux Plateaux (also known as Les colonnes de Buren), for the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais-Royal in Paris. That same year, he won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale. He is one of the most active and recognised artists on the international scene. In 2007, Daniel Buren was awarded the Præmium Imperiale for painting.