Daniel Buren Unveiled as Belmond and Galleria Continua’s MITICO Artist of 2024

“I love the fact that the fountain is an existing object,” says Buren of the soft carved stone column that sits in the middle of the water, with jets gently spraying from a ball top ringed with lion heads. Buren’s eight vertical columns are decorated with his trademark stripes, in white and blue, yellow, or pink; each outward face clad in mirror. The colors glow in the crisp Cape Town light and, as the standard tones of the printing industry, feel suitably universal in a setting where people are visiting from far and wide.

Champenois is Parisian, but since 2016 he has lived in London, in his role as Senior Vice President–Global Brand and Marketing for the Belmond Hotel Group. Formerly of Cartier, L’Oreal, and Starwood, he is now the brand custodian of a string of extremely historic properties, including Castello di Casole, outside of Florence, where there has been a castle since the 10th century, and La Residencia in Majorca, where the original buildings date back to the 16th century. “But we need to stay relevant and contemporary in spite of all that,” says Champenois, “and art is a fantastic way to bring a place to life, and to stay in touch with the contemporary world.”

And he should know. When not travelling for work, Champenois travels for art, visiting, in recent years, the Donum sculpture park in Sonoma, California and the art island of Naoshima in Japan. “To see Monet’s Water Lilies in natural light! What an experience!” he says of viewing the French Impressionist’s paintings in the purpose built Tadao Ando building.

In 2021, Champenois met Lorenzo Fiaschi, one of three directors at Galleria Continua, an internationally active gallery of contemporary and modern art that is based in San Gimignano and has additional spaces in Rome, Paris, and Havana, among others. Together, the pair decided to create an umbrella project called MITICO, to show the work of major artists each summer across a number of Belmond hotels. The first edition, in 2022, presented a small-scale house made of pots and pans by the Indian artist Subodh Gupta in the Casanova Gardens of the Hotel Cipriani in Venice.

In 2022, they chose a group of humanistic artists, including the Argentinian Leandro Erlich and the Italian Michelangelo Pistoletto, and invited them to create temporary interventions at six Belmond properties. But this year, the commission for all six has been extended exclusively to Daniel Buren. With Cape Town complete, he is heading next to Rio de Janeiro where an installation of translucid colored panels will transform the windows of the ocean-facing façade of the famous Copacabana Palace.

“It’s really a piece of public art,” says Champenois. “A gift to the city.” Following that, Buren will next unveil site-specific artworks at Villa San Michele in Florence, where a skylight in the bar will receive his attention; then on to Castello di Casole in the Tuscan countryside to create a renewed version of a piece he first developed on an island in Japan in 1985; then to the Hotel Cipriani in Venice; and finally La Residencia in Mallorca. The last two are very much work in progress.

Champenois, meanwhile, is increasing the artistic reach of the Belmond brand in other ways. For a recent advertising campaign, he commissioned 10 established and emerging photographers, including the 33-year-old Jack Davison, to shoot the company’s hotels in a way that he describes as “disruptive to the travel industry.” Indeed, if an 85-year-old like Buren is still shaking up our expectations, then Champenois is quite right that his industry should be doing it too.

Daniel Buren’s MITICO installations can be view at Belmond’s Mount Nelson through February, 2025; Copacabana Palace, starting March 15 until September 30; Villa San Michele April 3 through September 30; Castello di Casole April 5 until November 17; Hotel Cipriani April 10 through September 30; and La Residencia April 29 until November 10.