Naples
The headquarters, archive and study of the Paul Thorel Foundation are located in two nineteenth-century buildings in Naples, in the Chiaia district. The headquarters are in Via Fiorelli 5, in the house once inhabited by the artist, and overlooks the Gulf of Naples, while the archive and the studio are in the same block, in Via Imbriani 48, in the old Palazzo in Parco Bivona. These spaces had been renovated by Thorel since 1994, when he decided to settle definitively in Naples, and today they are used as guesthouse, production laboratory and works archive. Owned by the Neapolitan branch of the artist’s family for several generations, the addresses of Via Fiorelli and Via Imbriani were conceived by Thorel as an articulated structure, divided between dwelling and a production centre with studio and storeroom, and equipped with advanced technology, thus able to guarantee absolute independence during the design and realisation of works of art. The Foundation has kept this architecture intact, making it available to contemporary creativity.
Panarea
Paul Thorel’s residence in Panarea is a large Aeolian-style building, once used as an oil mill and overlooking Drautto beach, at the extreme tip of the island. Meticulously renovated in the early 2000s, it is a place of peace and meditation, immediately imagined as the artist’s buen retiro. Since the 1960s Panarea has been a destination loved by artists — from Sebastian Matta and Bruno Munari, to Giorgio Poppi and Leonardo Cremonini — and has become a sophisticated international crossroads of meetings and relationships. Thorel spent all his summers as a child in Panarea, and bought the oil mill when it was in ruins, abandoned for decades. Thorel’s dream, interrupted by his untimely demise, was to make the mill a large agricultural enterprise specialised in vine cultivation, by using the land adjacent to the building. A unique project in Panarea, inspired by the rediscovery of indigenous wines. The Foundation has decided to conserve the vineyards, transforming the Frantoio into a unique model of residence, a shared place for art, culture and hospitality projects.
Hydra
The Foundation’s residence on the Greek island of Hydra, in the Aegean Sea, is the last project imagined by Paul Thorel before his death. Like Panarea, Hydra is an intimate and meditative place, with a long history of illustrious residents, and in the summer months, a centre for a vast cosmopolitan community of artists and protagonists of contemporary culture. The building, purchased by Thorel in the early 2000s and now owned by the Foundation, overlooks the central square of the village, and once completed will become a further residential and operational hub of the Foundation’s activities.
