Ugo Pierucci was born in Italy, and studied engineering at the University of Rome. He started collecting Old Master paintings and works of art in 1986 and has developed an important collection over the last 15 years. His other interests include construction and property businesses. He lives in Rome and London and is married with one daughter.

Ian Dunlop worked for eight years as the head of Citibank Private Bank’s Art Advisory Service in London. He is an author and expert on Impressionists and Modern art. His first book, The Shock of the New, was published in 1972. It was followed by books on Munch, Van Gogh, and a major study on the life and art of Edgar Degas. In 1973 he joined Sotheby’s in the United States as a painting appraiser before becoming head of the Contemporary Art department in New York. After his return to London he worked as an independent dealer and later joined the Art Advisory Service. Among his achievements at Citibank was to start the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize.

Roger Bevan was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge where he read History of Art, specialising in Italian High Renaissance painting. He is The Art Newspaper’s senior contemporary art market correspondent. He is the director of Exhibition Circle, a weekly forum exploring current exhibitions in London. He organises and leads tours with American museum trustee and benefactor parties, including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum and the American Friends of Israel Museums.

Thomas E. Jones was educated at Williams College, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the University of California at Berkeley.   He is a partner in an international law firm based in Beijing and is a collector of  Chinese art.  He has lived in Hong Kong and Beijing since 1980 and has formed collections in the following categories:  Twentieth Century Chinese painting and calligraphy; Chinese antique furniture; Chinese carpets; Chinese export silver and Chinese works of art. He is editor and translator of the book Classical Chinese Doors and Windows (Chinese Architecture and Building Press, 2003).

Dia Azzawi is one of the most renowned painters and sculptors of the Arab world. Born in 1939 in Baghdad, he studied Archaeology at Baghdad University, and later studied Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, Iraq. Being a contemporary of Modern Arab Painters and sculptors such as Ismail Fattah, Fateh Modarress, Shafiq Aboud among many others and working closely with them, he has an in depth knowledge of the works of these artists. He initially worked with the Department of Antiquities in Baghdad, and was then the Art Consultant at the Iraqi Cultural Center in London. He has work as Art director, design director and has been on the editorial board of several Arab art and cultural magazines such as UR: The International Magazine of Arab Culture, London, Funun Arabia Art Magazine, London, Mawakif, London, and Jusoor, Washington DC. He has also acted as an art advisor for Kinda Foundation in Saudi Arabia and has advised on gathering a collection in Qatae that today has become the seed of the Qatar Museum collection of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. Today, Dia lives and works in London.