BUSINESS ART
Art Leader Profile
Baylon Sandri By Lloyd Pollak Meeting Baylon Sandri for the first time at his new gallery in Buitengracht Street, I was struck by the suavity with which he wed the bluntness of the hard-pressed executive to manners of such irreproachable correctitude as to make him seem a throwback to a past generation. His formality keeps one at a certain distance, and confines conversation to the purely professional with nary a lapse into the personal. Baylon quickly dispensed with pleasantries, provided me with an excellent cup of coffee, and cut straight to the matter in hand, outlining the role his background played in his decision to become an art dealer. That venerable institution, the old La Perla in the city centre near the Metro cinema, which opened in 1957, and its Sea Point successor, loom large in his account. “Mobiles designed by Alexander Calder gave La Perla an air of up-to-the-minute, post-war modernity, and it soon became a hang-out for artists, musicians, actors and directors in search of a continental atmosphere which was so rare here at that time. My father was a keen collector, and he befriended many artists. Irma Stern, Edoardo Villa, the Skotnes’s, Jean Welz and Charles Gassner were all part of our family circle, and the restaurant functioned as an informal exhibition space in which my father’s acquisitions formed part of the décor. The tradition continues as I regularly embellish it with my latest purchases. La Perla has always been the Cape Town equivalent of the many salon-type restaurants, cafes and bars which serve as rallying places for artists and intellectuals in Europe.” Friends tell me that La Perla possesses the intimacy of a Parisian restaurant du quartier where the clientele all know each other, and view the waiters as old friends. This unique ambience can be attributed to its adored patron, 52
Baylon’s handsome father, Emiliano, whose irresistible charm suffuses the entire establishment. “Art was very much part of our family life. My mother, a Michaelis graduate, took me to exhibitions and auctions from a tender age. I grew up in Bantry Bay and then we moved to a farm near Wellington. I attended Paarl Boys High and Stellenbosch University where I studied law and business, before completing an MBA in Milan.” Baylon’s Cape Town upbringing, Italian antecedents and Boland education give him a slick gloss of cosmopolitanism. Here is a man thoroughly at home in three different languages and cultural traditions. He switches identities constantly, metamorphosing from a stately, reserved Piedmontese gentiluomo, to a Southern suburbs scion of good family, to a true son of the veldt, rolling his gargly ‘r’s and gutturalizing his gravelly ‘g’s like the best of boereseuns. “I only started commercially dabbling in art from 2002 when I opened a tiny, hole-in-the-wall gallery in Stellenbosch, and what sparked off my decision to become a fully-fledged, professional dealer was the pleasure I derived from organizing the ambitious Skotnes/Villa show at Lanzerac. At the time my brother Paolo was renovating an old student back-packers in the De Wet Center, Stellenbosch, and when I visited it I saw its potential as a gallery. Paolo spent a further two years gutting the interior walls to create a magnificent, airy, uncluttered space, while I sought out artists and devised our marketing strategy. My entire family has a strong interest in the gallery, and everything we do is done in consultation with my parents and brothers.” So compelling is Baylon’s feeling for la famiglia that he often forswears the pronoun ‘I’ in favor of the first person plural, and his continual use of this imposing dynastic ‘we’, often made me feel as if I were addressing the spokesman for some major corporate rather than a private individual. SA ART TIMES. MARCH 2011