Leoncillo The Stars of Art Basel

By Sarah Cascone

When CULTURED visited Thaddaeus Ropac’s Art Basel booth, the gallery was prepping to send out of the press release announcing its representation of the estate of Leoncillo, an Italian sculptor born in 1915 who represented his country at the Venice Biennale no less than six times.

After the artist’s death in 1968, a lack of consensus among family members kept any one gallery from taking on his work. Now, the family is finally working together to secure Leoncillo’s legacy, joining Ropac’s roster as well as launching a new foundation to manage the estate. The first show will open at the dealer’s Milan outpost in September.

The gallery has a track record of taking on artists and estates who are little known outside Europe. “There have been Leoncillo sales at auction of up to a million dollars, but they are quite isolated,” Sarah Rustin, the gallery’s global senior director of communication, told me. “There hasn’t been consistent access to his works internationally.”

Leoncillo had two major cheerleaders within Ropac’s orbit who helped make it all happen: Elena Bonanno di Linguaglossa, who joined the gallery as its Milan director in January 2025, and Bernard Blistène, the recently retired artistic director of Paris’s Centre Pompidou, who had shown the artist’s work there, and collaborated with the gallery over the years.

At the fair, Ropac is offering the 1967 sculpture Tre Tagli (A, B, C), a trio of almost spinal-looking terracotta columns measuring about 20 inches tall. The piece sold for €270,000 ($313,500).

Leoncillo is known for his work in clay, which set him apart from contemporaries who favored bronze. “He really wanted to bring the life force out the material,” Rustin shared.