Craig Mattoli

  Leona Craig Art is a different kind of contemporary Chinese art gallery.  First of all, we cover artists from the whole contemporary period, including the second generation of modern Chinese artists, many of whom are still alive and working.  Thus, our art, also, in a sense, presents a history of most of China's modern post-imperial era, as seen from the artist's point of view.  Moreover, while the press and many galleries focus on the latest craze, the art of the first generation of modern Chinese artists has been achieving record auction results, and we are sure that it will not be too long before that of the second generation will get more attention.   Indeed, we do not just choose art from artists who are part of the latest fad in contemporary Chinese art, but we look closely and carefully at art from artists, old and new, known and unknown, to find fine art with more unusual, but meaningful, social commentary.  Instead of the same sullen or red faced people, in new situations, we offer a variety of art, covering a range of  topics, in imaginative ways.  And if political art is your thing, instead of current artists who mock the Cultural Revolution and Mao from a safe distance of several decades, we have art by artists who confronted them, during the actual period.

The curator of the collection is Craig Mattoli, who has been collecting art since he was six years old, has been investing in inefficient markets for several decades, through his company, Red Hill Capital.  In the 1980's, he was a Wall Street arbitrageur, and, in the 1990's, he created one of the first art inns, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  He and his team have been working, in China, with various artists for almost a decade, getting to know the market for modern Chinese art, from the inside.  Leona Craig Art has taken up residence in Dongshan Kou, an old part of Guangzhou (Canton), whose buildings date back to the early 1900's, and which, with Leona Craig Art's help, is on its way to becoming the Soho of Guangzhou, as it reminds Mattoli of Soho, in New York, in the 1970's.