Ornellaia Vendemmia d’Artista 2020: wine and charity, September 7-21, online auction

One of the most eagerly awaited charity auctions for enthusiasts of great collectible wines is back online: from September 7 to 21, the large formats of Ornellaia’s Vendemmia d’Artista, vintage 2020, featuring “La Proporzione” interpreted by Joseph Kosuth, will be auctioned via the web at Sotheby’s. Yet another edition of one of the longest-running projects capable of linking wine, art and solidarity, and which to date has distributed more than $2.3 million to leading cultural institutions and museum foundations. Such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the “Mind’s Eye” project, which provides access to art for the blind or visually impaired, to which the funds raised from the sale of lots, including 12 Double Magnum lots, Imperials and the unique 9-liter Salmanazar, will be destined again this year.
“We are proud to support this initiative: as in art”, stresses Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja, CEO of Ornellaia, “the appreciation of great wines requires the total involvement of the senses. And furthermore, being partners with the Guggenheim is a way for us to give back to the community something of nature’s immense benevolence towards us”. These unrepeatable bottles produced by one of the most precious estates in Italian wine and the Frescobaldi Group’s wine galaxy are thus precious three times over: for their contents, for the work of art that dresses them, and finally for their charitable purpose.
“I think language is an important part of the experience of everything and these experiences are formed in a certain way at the level of language. The architecture of experience through language was obviously always in play, and I think Vitruvius was a great source for understanding a concept like proportion. Proportion is not only the balance of the elements for the eye, but it is also a balance of all the elements that make it an entity of perfection of what it means to the world, thus forming it also as a conception”, explained US artist Joseph Kosuth, one of the leading exponents and theorists of conceptual art, who, interpreting the perfect “proportion” between elegance, power and complexity that, in 2020, of Ornellaia man and nature have been able to draw, created a series of works centered on the word “wine” and Vitruvius’ quote in 31,3 of De Architectura.
The 0.75-liter bottle sees the quotation in English engraved on paper; in the 100 examples of Double Magnums, the etymological tree of the word “wine” is affixed to the bottle in relief; while the 10 Imperials, each a unique piece, see the etymological tree made using the glass-engraving technique. A single branch is highlighted in white and the Vitruvius quote translated into the highlighted language or one of its modern descendants: Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Italian, Hindi, Hebrew, Modern Greek, Irish, German and Armenian. For Salmanazar, the etymological tree and the underlying Vitruvius citation are in English and the relief applied to the bottle is in platinum.