Final serve for those with taste for art

It closed its kitchen in January. Now Lucio’s will auction off its unique art collection, featuring some of Australia’s finest artists.

Tim Olsen at Bonhams auction house Woollahra in Sydney's Eastern suburbs ahead of the auction, Lucio’s: Food, Art & Friendship. Picture: Britta Campion.

For almost four decades Lucio’s in Paddington has played host to more artists, celebrities and captains of industry than perhaps any other restaurant in Australia, serving up an authentic slice of Ligurian cuisine for both lovers of food and art.

Celebrated for its colourful collection of drawings, paintings and ceramics — as well as its food — the restaurant’s most cherished pieces will be auctioned by Bonhams on March 21, after Lucio and Sally Galletto called time on their long careers in the restaurant business earlier this year.

The restaurant was renowned for its presentation of avant-garde and contemporary art, with loyal patrons including Robert Hughes, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Tim Storrier, Colin Lanceley and Elisabeth Cummings.

“Whether it’s romance, business, or running an art gallery, it’s all about getting the feeling right,” says artist Tim Olsen, “and Lucio was a master at all this, ­especially in how he embraced art as an extension of food.”

Olsen, whose Paddington gallery was once next door to Lucio’s, has enjoyed a long ­association with the restaurant, saying it was always a meeting place for “anybody and everybody who wanted to enjoy a fine, unpretentious meal” in the setting of an Italian trattoria.

“Dad (John) often called Paddington ‘the arrondissement of the east’ and Lucio’s his ‘restaurant on the Left Bank’,” Olsen says.

“Lucio’s relationship with artists was extraordinary because it was symbolic of his egalitarianism. He didn’t see you as a customer, he was really more about feeding anybody and everybody that was willing to enjoy his food.”

Lucio and Sally Galletto, at Lucio's in Paddington. Photo: John Feder.

Bonhams Australia director Merryn Schriever anticipates a special and slightly unusual auction. “We’ve had constant calls from people who are, of course, interested in the artworks themselves,” Ms Schriever says. “But mainly they’re interested in their association with an important memory or personal moment they experienced at Lucio’s.”

Olsen says: “The smartest person in the auction house is the person who buys all the plates. Or, better still, makes an offer for the whole bloody lot.”