Day: 28 October 2016

The Art Monaco Contemporary Art Fair returns for its seventh edition in 2016 from October 27 to 30 at the Chapiteau Fontvieille. Since its debut in 2008, Art Monaco has established itself as a platform for cross-cultural exchanges as well as a networking hub for galleries, collectors, artists, enthusiasts, and tastemakers, the organisers say.
Presented by the global event producer Opus Eventi, Art Monaco 2016 will showcase a diverse selection of more than 4,000 works of art from 30 countries. This year’s fair brings together 65 galleries, including Kapopoulos Fine Arts (Greece), Galerie Les Oreades (Moscow), Olga Lomako Studio (UK) and Myanmar Ink Art Gallery (Dubai).
With vernissage-style exhibits during the day and elite black-tie events in the evening, Art Monaco is a series of three private parties. The addition of a new 5000m2 sculpture garden at this year’s fair will add yet another dimension, enabling visitors to admire the beautiful surroundings while enjoying a glass of champagne.
According to director Johnessco Rodriguez, Art Monaco is getting stronger and stronger in terms of its international exposure, with a current presence in more than 52 countries. He says that regardless of the fact it is a small event, Art Monaco attracts important figures from the art world, as well as Hollywood guests and members of royal families.
“Art Monaco’s main objective is to be a platform where both emerging and experienced members of the art industry can find an excuse to enjoy the beauty and exclusivity that Monaco has to offer and, at the same time, create new business opportunities for all of us,” says Mr Rodriguez. “The year 2017 will be very important for us as we will increase not only the size of the show but the activities as well.”
Highlights of this year’s fair include fashion parades featuring recognized designers presenting new collections, live performances by Chanette Manso and Serafino Rudari, a tribute to the famous Italian artist Massimo Gargia, a showcase of three unique and exclusive pieces by British-born artist Benjamin Shine, as well as works by emerging artists Yana Rusnak, Linda Condes, and Maya Jimsheleishvili.
Article first published on October 25, 2017.

On Friday, November 4, around midnight, a food truck will transport some 150 pounds of Shetland fish to Monaco, pulling up to serve authentic fish and chips to a hungry crowd, which in the past has included HSH Prince Albert, as part of the Monte-Carlo Whisky Festival.
The 5th edition of the event, which runs Wednesday, November 2 to Sunday, November 6, gathers collectors, investors and connoisseurs from around the world and is put on by La Maison d’Ecosse, incorporated in Monaco in 2012. Its mission is to showcase the luxuries of Scotland in the Principality through “Scotland’s true Ambassador”, whisky.
La Maison d’Ecosse is run by Darlo and Anita Di Sotto, who are also President and Secretary-General of the non-profit Monte-Carlo Whisky Society, for which HSH Prince Albert II is the Honorary President and, as of April 2015, Keeper of the Quaich at Blair Castle. Mike Powers serves as Vice-President.
La Maison d’Ecosse holds monthly whisky tastings around Monaco open to the public and also hold four members-only Masters Classes across the year. Earlier this month, “fellows” gathered onboard “Ellen” in Cap d’Ail for a Glenrothes Master Class Tasting with Ronnie Cox, a Global Ambassador for the distillery through England’s oldest wine company, Berry Bros & Rudd (whose current chairman is advisor to the Queen).
Mr Cox is a seventh generation whisky man. Although, as he told Monaco Life, “Two of the generations, however were illegally producing whisky in Scotland and one of my relatives was fined £200 and £300 in 1816.”
Explaining the history of the spirit, Mr Cox said, “Whisky was a practical thing in Scotland in the 1850s because it was so cold and if they had barley surplus, they’d make whisky, although it was so expensive it was rare. But a shot of whisky in the winter was a Godsend.”
When the railroads arrived, it became easy to export the drink around the commonwealth and by the 1920s, while the US had prohibition, it became de rigueur to drink blended whiskys everywhere else.
There are a few reasons for this. Pioneering salespeople dressed the part and convinced people it was a superior drink and, according to Mr Cox, the Prime Minister during World War One wanted to keep munitions workers from drinking too much, so he half-banned the spirit by saying you had to drink whisky at least two years old, then it was three years old … so they took whisky off the markets. It became more expensive and harder to find.
Over the last decades worldwide people have been personifying brands, so you have to look the type to drink a certain label. “My grandfather would never believe you’d spend €1,000 on a bottle of whisky,” commented Mr Cox. “It was three days’ pay for an agricultural worker in 1970. You could buy that same bottle today with three hours of wages.”
Is it a bottle worth €1,000? “This year’s conference theme is Collect, Invest or Drink?” said Mrs Di Sotto. “There are two distinct whisky clients. One is knowledgeable and looking for a unique tasting product that he can understand, and the other is an aspirational buyer who wants a bottle that costs a lot of money. More and more of the latter are getting hooked onto learning. This would never have happened in Monaco five years ago.”
“Monaco is new territory for customers in terms of export for whisky,” Mr Cox said before adding “the French drink more whisky in a month than cognac in a year”.
La Maison d’Ecosse produces a special Monaco Blend whisky (€120), on sale directly from their website. But more remarkable, it’s bottling the Grimaldi Collection. Prince Albert, who has Scottish roots going back to his great-great grandmother, travels annually to Scotland with the Di Sottos to tastes various casks, and chooses one to bare his family’s name. From 2015 to 2021, there will be ten unique bottles from ten different casks that will make up the Grimaldi collection, which will be auctioned off in 2021 in support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the Oceanographic Museum.
Last year the Prince picked Glenmorangie, and this year, he had the choice of ten Glenrothes casks. To make it even more exclusive, Glenrothes has taken the end product and put it in another cask, a world first.
Whisky enthusiasts can find our more about the Grimaldi Collection at the Monte-Carlo Whisky Festival, which this year has added “Whisky from the Attic” in the tasting room. Anyone can bring in a bottle of whisky for experts, either to authenticate or sell at auction by phone on the spot.
Tastings, whisky and popcorn evenings, and workshops across the week (tickets from €10, book online) can be found at the Metropole Hotel. The St Andrew’s Gala Banquet takes place Friday while the Monaco Blend Party is on Saturday. For a full program and to order tickets, visit the website.
Article first published October 20, 2016.

“Une rencontre” by Jean and Danièle Lorenzi-Scotto opens today at the Salle d’Expostion in the port. Organized by the Directorate of Cultural Affairs and designed by Lidia Carrion, the exhibition will allow the public to discover more than two hundred works of Jean and Danièle Lorenzi-Scotto, two figures who made a mark in Monaco’s cultural life during the second-half of the twentieth century.
Their story is a powerful one of love.
Jean-Eugène Lorenzi, born in 1916, was a lawyer in the Principality for over forty years; he was also elected to the National Council and a member the Crown Council. His passion for drawing led him to work with several mediums, such as pencil or charcoal, but it was undoubtedly ink that remained his favourite, as it allowed him to best express his imagination. Towards the end of his life, the artist experimented with etching on substrates as diverse as copper, zinc, and mostly linoleum plexiglass.
But he was much more than a man who drew. He wrote a cookbook “Cuisine Monegasque” for which Princess Grace congratulated him personally by letter in 1970 on his initiative to respect Monegasque traditions; he designed stamps that were used in circulation by La Poste Monaco; and he wrote lyrics for Ischa, an opera performed at the Palais des Festival in Cannes. He died tragically in 1989.
“My favourite work is the portrait I painted of my husband,” Mme Lorenzi-Scotto told Monaco Life at the preview. “A portrait always takes a person’s soul.”
Mme Lorenzi-Scotto, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, spent a few years in Paris before returning to Monaco to teach at the Municipal School of Decorative Arts, where she worked for over twenty years and often painted portraits of her students, some of which are included in “Une rencontre”.
It was in Monaco she met her husband, Jean, twenty years her senior. “We always made time for art,” Mme Lorenzi-Scotto said.
This showing is the first time that the work of these two artists has been open to the public. A celebration of love and art, it offers a glimpse of the Monaco of yesteryear. Mme Lorenzi-Scotto decided to show her paintings and her husband’s drawings as to not confuse visitors.
Her earlier paintings were described as the “explosive form of Fauvism” but then, after the death of her husband, she moved to clean lines and light effects.
“I’ve always been faithful to my style,” the 81-year-old said to Monaco Life. Looking together at her only self-portrait on display, she added, “When I was 17, I wanted to be an actress but my mother would not allow it, so I became an artist.”
About ten years ago, Mme Lorenzi-Scotto fulfilled her adolescent dream and joined a theatre group, and is still acting today. She “often performs Pagnol” on stage.
Mme Lorenzi-Scotto is remarkable. And so are her paintings.
“Une rencontre” runs October 19 to November 16, 1 pm to 7 pm (except Mondays), at the Salle d’Exposition du Quai Antoine 1er.

Article first published October 21, 2016.

UPDATED: The birthplace of Princess Grace in Philadelphia has been bought by the royal family in Monaco. The sale of the brick mansion at 3901 Henry Ave. in East Falls has been completed for an unconfirmed price.

Prince Albert told People magazine, “The house was very beautiful and very special to our family. I remember one visit, one of the earliest I recall, Grandma put me up in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I must have been about five and it was one of the first times I remember when I wasn’t put in with my sister. I remember just staring out the window, watching the cars go by, enjoying being alone.”

Albert commented on a separate visit, “I couldn’t have been more than two, probably my first visit to the house. I remember rolling about on the carpet in the living room.”

The 4,000-square-foot house was built by John B. Kelly Sr., father of the actress-turned-princess, in the late 1920s. The house had been listed at $750,000 when it was removed from the market on September 3, but without a recorded deed the exact sale price could not be determined. It had been priced at $1 million when originally listed in July.
Before Grace Kelly became an Academy Award-winning movie star, then a princess with her marriage to Prince Rainier III in 1956, the brick Georgian house at Henry Avenue and Coulter Street was her home, completed about the time of her birth in 1929. She lived there with her parents; her brother, John B. Jr.; and her sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth.
In 1950, Grace left East Falls to pursue a modelling and acting career. The family continued to live in the house until its sale by her mother in 1974. John Kelly Sr. died in 1960, and his widow in 1990.

“We’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do with it. We’re looking at having it contain some museum exhibit space and maybe use part of it for offices for some of our foundation work,” the Prince said.

Article first published October 16, 2016.