About Bergelli Limited
Bergelli Limited provides the art and design trade with high quality reproductions. We offer artwork that brings life to commercial interiors and private residences.
Bergelli Limited was founded by owners of Gallery Bergelli in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gallery Bergelli shows Jeff Faust originals and based on powerful reactions to Faust's work, Bergelli Limited was established to offer these unique images to an expanded market.
Q&A with Robin Critelli
By Susanne Casgar, Editorial Director, Art Business News, Dec 2006
Q. What was it like growing up in Montana?
Montana was a great place to grow up. Nice people and beautiful open spaces. There’s something really genuine about the people there. I grew up in Billings, which is the largest city in the state with a population of a little over 100,000. The entire state still has fewer than 1 million people. I’m from a family of nine children and I lived in the same house until I went off to college. We walked to school and we walked home for a hot lunch prepared by Mom and then we walked back to school. It was all pretty normal, at least for the time.
I moved from Montana just as I turned 30. I had worked for a property casualty insurance company for about five years and I was offered a great career opportunity in corporate headquarters, located in Minneapolis/St.Paul. I had grown up pretty sheltered and so moving all by myself to what I considered a very big city felt like a very adventurous (and scary) thing to do.
Most of my family still lives in Billings. It’s great to go back, and the longer I’m away, the more I’m struck by how different it is. We love to go at Thanksgiving because we love to attend the annual Holiday Parade. Can you imagine the Wal-Mart Shopping Cart Drill Team; the meter maid brigade; and, of course, the sheep on flat-bed trucks? It’s great fun and it’s great for my kids. There’s no place they’d rather visit.
Q. You went from a large property, casualty insurance company to art? Tell us about this drastic career change.
Growing up, I never would have picked an insurance company as a career or even as a business. I only remember aspiring to things much more exciting—like acting or writing. I was part of the feminist movement and I found myself working for a traditional male-dominated company in a traditional male-dominated industry. But I worked for a company that was working hard to be progressive and to do the “right thing.” I was a single woman who was happy to work long hours and travel as needed. Being one of a few women working at a certain corporate level gave me lots of visibility, and I continued to be given new jobs to do. In the early ’90s, I moved to San Francisco to run the California region. The role of the field offices prior to that time was essentially to execute corporate policy. As part of a restructure, I became president of the California region with lots of authority to develop and implement a business strategy for California. It was great fun and it helped me to really understand that what I like to do is develop strategy and build organizations. And I like to swim in big ponds. I’ll always take the “small fish in a big pond” option.
I met my husband, Stephen Berg, right after I moved to San Francisco. We started a family through adoption. Our daughter Lily was born in China in 1996 and we brought her to the United States on her 1st birthday. In 2001, Stephen, Lily, and I journeyed to Taiwan for our now 6-year-old son, Chen Carter. While [the adoptions] changed my life, they didn’t really change my career. My husband has always been a fully involved parent, and we manage our businesses and personal lives as a partnership. Since he had his own [non-art] business, he was able to take Lily to work with him during the first 10 months we had her. Then another big corporate restructuring happened. My job was no longer fun and authority was being pulled from the field back into corporate headquarters. As a result, I resigned.
When I met my husband, our common interest was art. Whether we were in San Francisco or traveling, we loved to look at art. We were looking for office space for my husband’s company and a new business that I would run. We saw the most wonderful space that had previously been a grocery store in the charming village of Larkspur in central Marin County, just minutes from our home. We decided to lease it and open Gallery Bergelli. The large back area of the building was a perfect space for my husband’s business. Our decision to buy the building has worked out great because it gives us lots of flexibility to run our businesses and raise our kids. My husband has always been an entrepreneur and is great at starting new businesses. I have a corporate background. We are each other’s advisors and partners, and it works out really well.
Q. What type of art were you and your husband first attracted to when you met? Have your tastes changed?
We like to look at just about any type of art. In terms of collecting, we go for contemporary. I don’t think our tastes have changed, but we have gotten to be more discerning. We both love Latin American art, and that was Stephen’s influence as he collected it when he was quite young. We like figurative work, Surrealism and abstracts.
We’re attracted to art that evokes a feeling beyond just being pleasant to look at. Among our favorite pieces are works by Roy DeForest and Inez Storer, both of whom are affiliated with the San Francisco Art Institute. And, of course, we have many favorites by artists shown at Gallery Bergelli. We select artists that we believe our clientele will like, but our personal taste is a big factor.
Q. How did Gallery Bergelli, and the name, come about?
Gallery Bergelli has been a lifestyle business. The decisions that we’ve made have a great deal to do with lifestyle. Opening the gallery wasn’t the result of a market analysis showing that a contemporary art gallery here in Marin County was a great way to make money. Instead, it was really based on our personal interest in art. It was a business that we knew would be fun and one that would give us flexibility to raise our kids. Our business is based on a strong set of personal ethics. We don’t show artists unless we personally like their work. But just as important, we must also personally like, respect and trust them. As Stephen says, we don’t write checks to people we don’t like. We aren’t aggressive “close the deal” sales people. Our personal style, and the style of the gallery, is informal, approachable and honest. That has worked well for us. Our target market is emerging collectors in their 30s or 40s that like art and now have the financial ability to collect but who may be a little intimidated by art galleries. No intimidation here; no stuffy gallery pretenses. We sell multiple pieces to a lot of our clients and they almost always return. Could we make more money doing it a different way? Probably. But it wouldn’t feel as good. We’ve never had to sell a painting to pay the rent—and that gives us freedom to do business in a way that we feel good about.
As for the name of the gallery, when my husband and I decided to get married, he was well aware of how I felt about my name and he never would have suggested that I drop my name and use his. My name’s important to me—it’s part of me—there’s just no way I’d get married and change it. One day he suggested that we both change our names to Bergelli (Berg & Critelli). When we opened the gallery, it felt like the right name. It works and we like it. We’re often referred to as “The Bergellis,” which really makes us chuckle.
Q. What made you decided to begin publishing?
I started showing Jeff Faust’s work shortly after I opened the gallery. We have a very strong and good relationship. We trust each other and it’s quite symbiotic. He paints and I take care of business. I don’t tell him what to paint, and he doesn’t tell me how to do business. We’ve built a very strong following for Jeff’s work in Marin County. I’ve had people who may have never thought about buying a painting, connect with one of his Jeff’s pieces and then have to have it. Some people have strong emotional reactions to his work. He’s not wildly prolific and he doesn’t have a large inventory. Jeff and I had thoughts of producing prints at the same time as a way of getting his images to a larger audience. So, Bergelli Limited was born and we went to print.
Gallery Bergelli really feeds my art soul and Bergelli Limited, the publishing business, feeds my business soul. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been in a more intensive, competitive business environment. I don’t mean to make it sound like a retail art gallery isn’t competitive and intense. It certainly can be, but it’s not how we’ve built Gallery Bergelli. Publishing is a very different kind of business and it has the potential for scale.
Q. What advice would you give a gallery owner who would like to do what you’ve done?
I think there’s an opportunity in publishing but it will become more and more competitive. Quality of the product will go up and the costs to produce the product will come down. There will continue to be innovations related to technology. I think it’s important for people to decide if they want to be in the large, general publishing market or be more of a “boutique” publisher.
Q. What’s your plan for Bergelli Limited? General – or boutique?
I see us as more of a value-added boutique publisher. I want to have a network of high-quality galleries that really believe in the work and I want the relationships to be much like the relationships that Gallery Bergelli has with its artists. We want to be active partners and we want to help our dealers be successful. I have no interest in being in every gallery in town. In areas where there’s a concentration of galleries, there should be only one gallery with Bergelli Limited prints to truly give the dealers an edge over their competition.
Q. How did you find artist Jeff Faust, and what first attracted you to him and his art?
It started when Jeff walked into the gallery. We consigned a few of his pieces, and they sold pretty quickly. It’s great to call the artist when you sell that first piece. And when you tell them they’ll get paid as soon as the check clears, they really appreciate it. We know it’s not the industry norm, but we really feel that it’s appropriate to pay the artist for their work when the gallery gets paid.
Q. Are you planning to move beyond publishing one artist? If so, what is your plan for finding additional artists?
We’re definitely moving beyond publishing one artist. I get artists portfolios from time to time that aren’t consistent with the Gallery Bergelli brand. That doesn’t mean that their work doesn’t have good publishing potential. I set those portfolios aside for later review. Once the network is built, offering more artists is a simple, logical way to grow revenue and it offers the dealers more value.
About Faust Prints
Caring for your Print
About the Artist Nature as Everyday Objects
The Subtle Surrealism of Jeff Faust
Original Paintings
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