Australian restaurant where Al Pacino and George Harrison dined to auction off 200 pieces of art as it closes down
- Some of Australia’s best-known artists including John Olsen and Elisabeth Cummings included in the collection at Italian restaurant Lucio’s in Sydney
- The works made the restaurant a cultural destination as much as a place for highly rated northern Italian cuisine
Lucio’s, the legendary Italian restaurant in Sydney that is putting up the shutters for good, is going to be holding a closing-down sale with a difference at the end of February.
The 37-year-old establishment where Al Pacino, George Harrison from The Beatles and Mikhail Gorbachev have all dined will auction off the 200 artworks that have been hanging on its Tuscan yellow walls on February 28.
The collection is a testimony to the close friendships between proprietor Lucio Galletto and many of Australia’s best-known modern and contemporary artists, and it has made Lucio’s a cultural destination as much as a place for highly rated northern Italian cuisine.
Auctioneer Bonhams has yet to release the catalogue of the sale but it says the collection features works by John Olsen, Elisabeth Cummings, Luke Sciberras, Garry Shead, Ann Thomson, Hilarie Mais, John Coburn, Tim Storrier and Sidney Nolan.
It all began in 1984, a year after Galletto and his wife, Sally, moved their young business to the leafy Sydney suburb of Paddington. Nolan – whose landscapes in the lobby of Hong Kong’s Exchange Square in Central will be familiar to many in the city – on a visit to the restaurant drew a sketch of famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in a table order notepad, and Galletto was so pleased with it he displayed it in the restaurant in a gold-leaf-covered frame.