Giancarlo Politi, publisher, art critic and founder of the Milan-based Flash Art magazine, has died at 89.
Born in 1937 in Trevi, Politi founded Flash Art in 1967 in Rome, before moving its headquarters to Milan in 1971. The magazine, dedicated to contemporary art criticism, started circulating internationally early on, splitting into Flash Art International and Flash Art Italia in 1978.
Trhough Politi Editor, the publishing house he co-founded with his wife Helena Kontova, Politi also published art books, catalogues and from 1975 the ArtDiary: an annual record of contact information for artists, critics, galleries, institutions, collectors, photographers, framers and more, once referred to by Andy Warhol as ‘the Bible of the art world’.
In 1993, Politi founded the Trevi Flash Art Museum that hosted exhibitions of contemporary artists including Damien Hirst, Vanessa Beecroft and Andres Serrano until its closure in 2007. He and Kontova also founded the Prague Biennale in 2003, which they directed until its last edition in 2013.
