Vistamare was founded in Pescara in 2001, originated by an idea of Benedetta, Federica and Vittoriano Spalletti. Benedetta Spalletti, who grew up surrounded by art, created a place devoted to the dialogue with artists, aiming to build a climate of cultural vitality linked to the territory, but at the same time capable of generating a broader exchange with the international reality. Since the beginning the gallery’s program has been dedicated to conceptual art, introducing exhibitions of established artists such as Ettore Spalletti, Joseph Kosuth, Haim Steinbach, Enrico Castellani, Getulio Alviani, Giovanni Anselmo, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Uncini, Louise Nevelson, Jan Vercruysse and Mimmo Jodice, alongside exhibitions, often dialogic, of artists from a different generation, such as Armin Linke, Mario Airò, Rosa Barba, Bethan Huws, Anna Franceschini and Linda Fregni Nagler.
Located inside an eighteenth-century historic palace in the heart of the town, the gallery consists of nine rooms with frescoes vaults. Over the years permanent site-specific works were created in some of the rooms, among which are currently visible the ones made by Ettore Spalletti, Sol LeWitt, Alberto Garutti and Haim Steinbach.
In 2018 Benedetta Spalletti, together with Lodovica Busiri Vici, opened a space in Milan, Vistamarestudio, where the first solo shows of Tom Friedman and Polys Peslikas were presented, together with several experimental exhibitions, such as the first performance in a gallery of the Israeli collective Public Movement.
In 2022 the two galleries in Pescara and Milan merged into a single project, Vistamare Milano|Pescara, and a new space was inaugurated inside a courtyard of an Art Nouveau building in Porta Venezia in Milan, including a central hall dominated by a large skylight that floods the space with natural light and two symmetrical and specular rooms. Here, in conjunction with the gallery program, which introduced new collaborations with Claudia Comte, Maria Loboda, Sara Enrico, Asli Çavuşoğlu, Charles Avery, Joana Escoval, Eileen Quinlan and Lorenzo Scotto di Luzio, a series of in-depth studies named “focus on” was started, centered on the research of emerging artists from the Italian and international scene, who are invited to exhibit their work at the gallery for the first time with site-specific projects specially conceived for the space.
