The DoppioFondo arts and culture association was founded in Venice in 2011. As a fine art print studio and independent publishing house, they specialise in workshops, artist-in-residence programmes and art projects. They also open up their studio to other artists to share our space and equipment.
The name of our association—doppio fondo—literally means false bottom. It was inspired by their first studio location, a secret room on the ground floor of a 17th century building. The owner of the building kept its existence a secret for decades thanks to the hidden door that perfectly concealed the room. Because of this, they decided to call this room the “false bottom.” Inside, there is a safe recessed in a column, and a door that opens onto the canal, a porta d’acqua in Italian, typical to Venice.
Edizioni DoppioFondo, among others, is one of their main projects and it aims to foster artists’ books, interpreting them as the expressions of a personal work or the final result of an artistic partnership. Their goal in this project is to promote books in a contemporary context, highlighting the importance of tradition-inspired printmaking techniques. This is the reason they choose to hand-print their books in limited edition, using tradition-inspired and non-toxic printmaking techniques.