Colin Gleadell spends some time with Valeria Napoleone, London collector who only buys works by women artists:
To artists and gallery owners, Napoleone has become a familiar figure since, roughly 12 years ago as a student in New York, she walked into a gallery in Brooklyn, made her first art purchase, and decided that thereafter she would collect works only by women artists. At the time, she was impressed with the way women artists were exploring “new media and a new language in art”, she says. Now she has more than 200 works – paintings, sculpture, photography, film, video and installations – in her collection.
One of the first artists she bought was the Iranian photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, who was making work that questioned the traditional role of women in Middle Eastern society. Another was the Egyptian artist Ghada Amer, who tackles issues of gender and sexuality and the oppression of women in her distinctively embroidered paintings of the female body. […]
Every corner of Napoleone’s home is filled with art – figurative, abstract, conceptual, it doesn’t matter as long as they are “major examples by the artist”, she says – though it doesn’t feel at all cluttered.
Art Sales: The Collection of Valeria Napoleone (Telegraph)
