Collezione Maramotti
Collezione Maramotti is a private contemporary art collection which opened to visitors in the historical headquarters of Max Mara company, in Reggio Emilia (Italy), in 2007.
Alongside the permanent collection, the Collection presents temporary exhibitions and invites international artists to create site-specific projects, with the aim of merging acquisition policies with public showing.
The Collection exhibits and acquires also the projects of artists who are awarded the two-yearly MaxMara Art Prize for Women in association with the Whitechapel, for emerging women artists working in the United Kingdom.
The winners of the first five editions of the Prize were: Margaret Salmon, Hannah Rickards, Andrea Büttner, Laure Prouvost and Corin Sworn.
The collection
The Collection comprises several hundred art works created between 1945 and the present day, more than two hundred of them belong to the permanent exhibition and represent some of the most important Italian and international artistic trends of the second part of the 20th century. The permanent exhibition comprises European art works from Expressionist and Abstract trends from the late 1940s and the Informal art of the early 1950s, plus a group of Italian early Conceptual art pieces. It exhibits a relevant group of paintings from the so-called Roman Pop and Arte Povera. There are also examples of Italian, as well as German and American, neo-Expressionism (Transavanguardia). Then a group of works of American New Geometry from the 1980s and 1990s are on exhibit, followed by more recent British and American experimentation works.
The location
Collezione Maramotti is housed in the former manufacturing plant of Max Mara fashion house. The building designed by architects Pastorini and Salvarani dates back to 1957 and was converted – with a project by British architect Andrew Hapgood – into an exhibition space in 2005 after the plant moved to another facility. The project has preserved and further enhanced, with relevant adjustments, some of the concepts from the original project: the stark and essential construction; the flexible and versatile structure, strong link between indoor and outdoor spaces, the emphasis on natural light.
The artists
Vito Acconci, Franco Angeli, Giovanni Anselmo, Shusaku Arakawa, Francis Bacon, Donald Baechler, Barry X Ball, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Huma Bhabha, Ashley Bickerton, Ross Bleckner, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri, Richmond Burton, Peter Cain, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Enrico Castellani, Bruno Ceccobelli, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Ettore Colla, Tony Cragg, Michael Craig-Martin, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, Mark Dion, Inka Essenhigh, Jean Fautrier, Tano Festa, Eric Fischl, Lucio Fontana, Ellen Gallagher, Peter Halley, Alex Katz, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer, Jannis Kounellis, Sherrie Levine, Osvaldo Licini, Markus Lüpertz, Martin Maloney, Mark Manders, Piero Manzoni, Carlo Maria Mariani, Arturo Martini, Eliseo Mattiacci, Fausto Melotti, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Henry Moore, Malcolm Morley, Cady Noland, Gastone Novelli, Nunzio, Luigi Ontani, Mimmo Paladino, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Pino Pascali, Richard Patterson, A. R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Matthew Ritchie, Tom Sachs, David Salle, Mario Schifano, Julian Schnabel, Sean Scully, Kiki Smith, Ray Smith, Erick Swenson, Philip Taaffe, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Giuseppe Uncini, Bill Viola, Dan Walsh, Terry Winters, Christopher Wool, Gilberto Zorio
Artists involved in temporary exhibitions and in site specific projects
Evgeny Antufiev, Alessandra Ariatti, Pedro Barbeito, Karla Black, Andrea Büttner, Gianni Caravaggio, Alice Cattaneo, Will Cotton, Ann Craven, Andy Cross, Enrico David, Matthew Day Jackson, Jules de Balincourt, Benjamin Degen, Flavio de Marco, Thea Djordjadze, Jason Dodge, Bart Domburg, Lalla Essaydi, Francesco Gennari, Wayne Gonzales, Kent Henricksen, Chantal Joffe, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Jacob Kassay, Ian Kiaer, Jutta Koether, Damian Loeb, Mark Manders, Esko Männikkö, Margherita Manzelli, Helen Mirra, Beatrice Pediconi, Enoc Perez, Alessandro Pessoli, Laure Prouvost, Daniel Rich, Hannah Rickards, Lisa Ruyter, Margaret Salmon, Thomas Scheibitz, Dana Schutz, Malick Sidibé, John Simon, Jessica Stockholder, Kara Tanaka, Gert & Uwe Tobias, John Tremblay, Michael van Ofen, Kelley Walker, Dan Walsh, Kevin Zucker