Founded in 2022, Studio la Linea Verticale draws inspiration from the sensibility of Franco Battiato and, in particular, from a line in Inneres Auge: “The horizontal line pushes us toward matter, the vertical one toward the spirit.” The gallery’s research aims at a detachment from the horizontality of ordinary experience, redirecting the gaze toward the verticality of the extraordinary. Its exhibition program invites reflection on fundamental, spiritual, and ontological questions: where do I come from? who am I? where am I going? Just as spirituality differs from religion in its personal, free, and interior character, so verticality is an act of will: an effort of orientation toward a contemplative dimension, in contrast with the immanence and materiality that dominate the contemporary art landscape. The gallery spaces, intimate and characterized by whiteness, take the form of a pensatoio: a place of concentration and listening, where reflection can find time and depth. Here, the Vertical Line is explored and traversed through the works of artists and the critical contributions that accompany them. To maintain openness and relevance within an increasingly plural contemporary context, the gallery embraces a variety of visual languages. It hosts both aniconic practices and research employing iconic or archetypal symbolism. The program focuses primarily on Italian artists, while regularly inviting international artists into dialogue, in order to highlight affinities and divergences in how the spiritual dimension manifests across different cultures. What unites these artists is a shared tension toward the sacred and a desire to move beyond purely material and immanent narratives. The works presented are characterized by a strong aesthetic component, understood not as ornament or rhetorical effect, but as a tool for perceptual and meditative elevation. Recurring elements include geometry, symbolic chromatics, primary materials, inner landscapes, contemplative devices, and religious, alchemical, or esoteric symbols reactivated in a contemporary key. As Giuliano Zanchi writes in Lo spirituale nell’arte, “Spirituality replaces the religious in our time: it is an attitude, a transcendent disposition of mind, independent of its object and therefore personal.”