Guardians of Roots: Why We Chose to Support the Onofrio Tomaselli Exhibition
When we decided to support the exhibition “Onofrio Tomaselli, Painter in Verist Sicily”, hosted at the Gallery of Modern Art in Palermo from June 12 to September 6, 2025, we did so with conviction and a sense of responsibility. For us at Tenute Navarra, this is not just a cultural partnership: it is an act of giving back, a way to say thank you to our land.
Tomaselli, with his intense and Verist painting style, succeeded in portraying late 19th and early 20th-century Sicily with a profound, human gaze full of truth. Works such as I carusi – which celebrates its 120th anniversary this year – are not just artistic masterpieces, but living testimonies of a past made of toil, dignity, and everyday beauty. And it is precisely this perspective that we feel close to: because we too, in our own small way, work every day to give value to the identity, memory, and authenticity of our island.
Our company was founded in Butera, in the heart of Sicily, and is rooted in a territory that we know well and that we have consciously chosen not to leave. Our team is young, and we believe deeply in “giving back”: returning something to the community, taking care of the context in which we live, and being an active part of a shared vision.
For us, supporting this exhibition means creating space for a dialogue between art and society, between memory and current events, between landscape and culture. The 56 works on display – many of which have never been seen before – and the contemporary installations by Fabio Tomaselli Paolizzo and Igor Grubić tell the story of a Sicily that is not just the past, but a present in motion, capable of speaking to the world.
Our mission goes beyond wine. We want to be interpreters of a Sicily that looks forward without forgetting who we are. For this reason, we feel like guardians – of an agricultural heritage, but also an artistic, cultural, and historical one. And we will continue to support it with passion, as an integral part of our work.
We invite you to visit this exhibition, to let yourself be touched by the expressive power of Onofrio Tomaselli, and to discover – or rediscover – a fundamental piece of the Sicilian soul.
