History

Marco Voena opened his first gallery, Voena, in Turin in 1989, inaugurating it with a curated selection of Italian paintings from 1380 to 1700, accompanied by a scholarly publication produced with FMR, Franco Maria Ricci. In 1992, he established himself as a leading specialist in Caravaggio and Caravaggesque painting, attributing a previously lost painting to the Italian master. In 1994, he opened a second gallery in Milan.

In 1999, in New York, Marco Voena collaborated with Sperone Westwater on Gold: Gothic Masters and Lucio Fontana, an exhibition that launched the juxtaposing curatorial style for which he would become known, pairing old masters and modern works side by side.
In 2004, Robilant+Voena launched in London, later expanding with spaces in St. Moritz and New York. The gallery distinguished itself as one of the leading international dealers in Old Master paintings and twentieth-century Italian art, before broadening its programme to include contemporary work.

Institutional clients have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Frick Collection, the National Gallery London, the Uffizi, the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia.

Voena has curated museum quality exhibitions of works by historical and contemporary artists alike. Among the old masters: Bernardo Zenale, Maddalena Orsola Caccia, Francesco Guardi, Antonio Joli, Gaspar van Wittel, and Giacomo Ceruti. Among modern masters: Giorgio Morandi, Lucio Fontana, Agostino Bonalumi, Paolo Scheggi, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mimmo Rotella, and Andy Warhol. Among contemporary artists: Julian Schnabel, Sean Scully, Damien Hirst, and Minjung Kim, among others.

The gallery's groundbreaking exhibition 800 Years of European Art, held at The Hyundai in Seoul and co-curated with Edoardo Voena, drew thousands of visitors. In 2019, Marco Voena curated The Gentileschi Effect, an exhibition exploring artists who followed in the footsteps of Artemisia Gentileschi, including her own daughter, Prudenzia, one of very few documented instances of such a lineage within female artistic tradition.

Marco Voena began publishing in 1990. Over the years, he has published a series of monographs and catalogues, including on Carlo Dolci (1616–89), Cesare Dandini (1596–1657), and Giulio Cesare Procaccini (Bologna, 1574 – Milan, 1625) with Allemandi, as well as on Lucio Fontana (Rosario, 1899 – Comabbio, 1968) and Agostino Bonalumi (Vimercate, 1935 – Desio, 2013) edited with art historians including Mina Gregori, Francesca Pola, Alessandro Morandotti, Paolo Campiglio, Odette D'Albo, and Hugh Brigstocke. In 2019, Voena launched Il Libro, an international, biannual magazine of Italian art, marking the founding of his art publishing house and his pursuit to capture the visual and intellectual essence of Italian culture for audiences beyond Italy.

In 2026, VOENA begins an exciting new chapter as an international gallery. Working from gallery spaces in London and Milan, alongside a seasonal space in St. Moritz, VOENA builds on a longstanding expertise in Italian Old and Modern Masters and their wider influence, alongside global contemporary art through VOENA Contemporary, continuing the vision of presenting art within a broader international context. VOENA also presents exhibitions and fairs internationally, with a particular focus on the United States, Korea, the Middle East, and India.