The aim of the CAMeC Museum is to house and showcase the substantial art collection acquired by the city over the years, either following the various editions of the Premio del Golfo painting prize, thanks to the Cozzani and Battolini donations or from other sources.
The Museum’s permanent Collection is an engaging experience for all, with an updated and refreshing display curated by Gerhard Wolf and open to the public from October 2024. The Collection covers the ground floor and the first floor of the building, and brings the artworks, the space and visitors together in celebration of its rich heritage and of the connection between art and the contemporary world.
The current exhibition features approximately 200 works, which have been arranged beyond the standard museum conventions. Some rooms present a series of works, while others contrast different styles, such as geometric and organic abstraction. The artworks are organised according to different themes, including body and performance, architecture, ecology, Pop Art, and the 1980s.
Full details of the works displayed in the new Collection can be found in this section.
Gerhard Wolf è direttore del Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institut dal 2003 e membro dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Berlino. Ha insegnato storia dell’arte all’Università di Treviri e come guest professor in università internazionali. I suoi interessi spaziano dall’arte globale e transculturale alle ecologie e teorie dell’immagine. Ha co-curato mostre importanti e pubblicato saggi su temi artistici, tra cui il più recente “Aby Warburg, Firenze e il laboratorio delle immagini” (2023).
ph credit: Alessandro Messina
Gerhard Wolf has been the Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute since 2003 and is a distinguished member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He has taught art history at the University of Trier and as a guest professor at various international universities. His research spans global and transcultural art, ecology, and theoretical frameworks. Wolf has co-curated major exhibitions and authored numerous essays on art, including his latest publication, Aby Warburg, Florence, and the Laboratory of Images (2023).
ph credit: Alessandro Messina
Other collections
Over the last decades, the museum collections have grown thanks to donations, competitions, public requests and the acquisition of works previously held in civic art galleries.
Featured artists include: Fernando Andolcetti, Bizhan Bassiri, Jacopo Benassi, Enrico Bortoluzzi, Enzo Cacciola, Giovanni Campus, Marco Casentini, Alberto Cavalieri, Ketty La Rocca, Ottonella Mocellin – Nicola Pellegrini, Concetto Pozzati, Ottone Rosai, Diet Sayler, Turi Simeti, and many others.
The Battolini collection
Ferruccio and Anna Maria Battolini’s collection, the last donation made to the city of La Spezia, stands as a symbol of sixty years of devotion to the art world. Ferruccio Battolini, art critic, writer and a keen bibliophile, managed to put together an artistic history of La Spezia from the second half of the 20th century, thanks to his close ties with numerous artists, as can be seen from the many dedications he received.
The collection includes works by some of the main exponents of the Premio del Golfo, of the Gruppo dei Sette and of key Italian post-war voices such as Guttuso, Montarsolo, Nespolo and Spinosa. It takes visitors on a historical journey from the early 20th century artists to their modern-day counterparts.
The Cozzani collection
In 1998 Giorgio Cozzani donated an impressive collection of artworks to La Spezia, the result of fifty years of research in the international contemporary scene. The collection features around a thousand pieces, comprising sculptures, paintings, graphic and photographic works. It doesn’t show any specific preference, but has an openly curious and inquiring feel to it.
The Collection encapsulates movements and artistic avant-gardes such as Expressionism, Futurism, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Abstract Art, Informal Art, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Graffiti. Artists on display include: Abramović, Baj, Boetti, Fontana, Pistoletto, Sironi, Rotella, Tápies and many others.
The “Premio del Golfo” collection
The origins of the CAMeC collections can be traced back to the Premio del Golfo prize, set up in 1933 as the National Painting Prize and dedicated to the Gulf of La Spezia by its founders Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Fillia. Many artists – particularly those linked to the Futurism movement – enthusiastically took part, in what was to be the start of La Spezia’s enduring interest for contemporary art. Fillia and Prampolini’s mosaics in the Palazzo delle Poste bear witness to that pivotal summer, as does Marinetti’s Aeropoema del Golfo della Spezia, a poetic celebration of the city viewed from a seaplane.
The Premio was next held in 1949, and ran until 1965, though it did return briefly with biannual editions from 2000 to 2006. Thanks to a prize-purchase agreement, the city obtained around 200 works of art that have become the core of the permanent Collection at CAMeC. Some of the artists on display include Accardi, Guttuso, Prampolini, Sironi and Vedova.
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