NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announced the sale of The Collection of Chiara and Francesco Carraro, with works offered across Post-War & Contemporary Art evening and day sales on November 15-16, 2016, followed by a dedicated auction of Italian glass and design on December 12, 2016 at Christie’s New York.

Francesco Carraro had visionary taste in art. Polymathic in his interests — from Italian glass and Tiffany lamps to 20th-century works of art and Modern furniture — Carraro and wife Chiara, focused their curiosity and connoisseurship on exceptional works of art and design. It was a decades-long creative journey that resulted in a deeply personal collection, composed of only what they loved. ‘I have accumulated a lot’, Carraro mused in later years, ‘too much to have on display all the time. [But] I love to look at beautiful things and be surrounded by them. I want to really live with the things I buy.’

Featured works in the Post-War & Contemporary Art sales, include pieces by Italian contemporary artists, Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994), Alberto Burri (1915-1995), Giuseppe Gallo (b. 1954), and Mario Schifano (1934-1998).

The collection of decorative art, design, and 20th Century Venetian glass, includes key works by Umberto Bellotto (1882-1940), Ercole Barovier (1889-1974), Nicolò Barovier (1895-1947), Gio Ponti (1891-1979), Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), Yoichi Ohira (b. 1946), and Guglielmo Ulrich (1904-1977), among others.

Born into an industrial family from the Veneto region, Francesco, lived his early years in Rome, later spending time in Berlin to study music, before settling in Venice with Chiara in the 1970s. It was there where he met many artists and collectors, forming a lifelong friendship with Ileana Sonnabend, the dealer of 20th Century art, and they established an impeccable collection of Italian Art Nouveau, Contemporary Art, and 20th Century Venetian glass, assembled over the last 50 years.

His flat became a depository for his growing collection and he began working with Gilda D’Agaro, renowned collaborator of Carlo Scarpa, to decorate the apartment in Capo S. Angelo near Campo Santo Stefano, a great Gothic building. Until his death in 2014, Francesco Carraro lived in this apartment surrounded by a lifetime’s achievement in connoisseurship and collecting, one that celebrated the constant evolution of international artistry. A beloved and glamorous figure, Carraro exuded an infectious enthusiasm for art and design that he hoped to pass to future generations. ‘I want these pieces to continue to have a life,’ he declared, ‘their beauty to be appreciated for generations to come.’

The collection will be sold in New York across Christie’s sales of Post-War and Contemporary Art in November and Design in December.