At 27, Hungarian artist Mona Osman is still at the early
stage of her career and while the Royal College of Art student has had a
solo exhibition at an artist-led contemporary gallery in London and was part of
group show at Saatchi Gallery last year, perhaps her biggest break will come
later this year: The young painter will have a solo exhibition at the Collezione
Maramotti, one of Italy’s top private art museums, which presents the
ever-growing art collection of the family that founded the upmarket
ready-to-wear company Max Mara.
“To have this opportunity is a huge honour and an amazing
chance to expand and visually showcase my research,” Osman says, adding her
challenging project will compared the Bible to notions of existential
philosophy.
Over recent years, the museum has increasingly been
supporting young artists and each year gives three or four emerging or
mid-career artists carte blanche to create works that will later form part of
the museum’s collection.
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Chantal Joffe
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“We believe that the awareness that their work has already
found a purchaser relieves the artist of economic worries, enabling them to
engage in a purer artistic research rather than in a commercial one,” explains
Sara Piccinini, Collezione Maramotti’s senior coordinator.
Located in the fashion brand’s first warehouse in the
northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia, the Collezione Maramotti was initially
set up to showcase artworks collected by Achille Maramotti, who founded Max
Mara in 1951. Though Maramotti died in 2005, two years before his long-planned
museum finally opened, his three children, all dedicated art collectors, have
continued to expand the collection which now comprises around 1,000 artworks,
with the second generation having more than doubled their father’s initial
collection.
Piccinini notes the common thread from father to children
has been collecting artworks “of their time,” focusing primarily, though no
longer exclusively, on paintings.
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Alessandro Pessoli
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While Achille Maramotti initially collected ancient art and
Metafisica (metaphysical) art, a movement created in 1911 by Giorgio de Chirico
and Carlo Carra that uses sharply contrasting light and shadow to create
dreamlike works that often had a vaguely threatening or mysterious quality,
Maramotti turned his attention to contemporary art in the early sixties.
The Collezione closely mirrors the developments of several
art movements including Art Informel from the 1940s-50s which embraced
abstraction and experimented with new materials; Arte Povera, a radical Italian
art movement of the late 1960s-70s whose artists explored a range of
unconventional processes and non-traditional ‘everyday’ materials; and Italian
neo-expressionism, known as the Transavanguardia, of the late 1970s-early 80s.
“He was interested in the latest artworks being produced and
one of the main qualities of the collection is that the works were purchased at
the time of their production. He liked to have a close and personal
relationship with artists, and he would visit them in their studio and purchase
the work from them directly, maybe not even finished yet, but showing there
were at a very important point of new development in their career,” Piccinini
says.
“From the 1960s he mainly focused on Italian art, and then
in the early 80s he started to look at American art, which he found more
interesting,” Piccinini says noting that he bought , early pieces by
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Alex Katz and Ross Bleckner, to name a
few.
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Gert & Uwe Tobias
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Maramotti’s children have continued to follow his mantra of
supporting emerging and mid-career artists.
“One of their main way to collect has been to invite young
and mid-career artists to produce a specific work for the collection,”
Piccinini says, adding the family is directly involved in the selection of
artists: “There is no board or commission. They are very passionate about arts
and they attend fairs and exhibitions. When they see something they like, they
research the artist to see at what point they are, and the commissions then
stem from that.”
In parallel, Max Mara, which is still run by the family, has
been collaborating with Whitechapel Gallery in London since 2005 to develop the
Max Mara Art Prize for Women, a biannual award given to an emerging female
artist working in the UK. Recipients, who are selected by Whitechapel Gallery,
are awarded a six-month residency in Italy leading to exhibitions at
Whitechapel Gallery and Collezione Maramotti, after which the Collezione
acquires the works.
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Thomas Scheibitz
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Recipients have included Emma Hart and Margaret Salmon, as
well as Laure Prouvost, who went on to receive the 2013 Turner Prize and is
representing France this year at the Venice Biennale.
The museum has recently rehang its second floor to showcase
the works of 10 artists that the Collezione has supported over the last 11
years with a room devoted to each, which Piccinini notes “gives visual
consistency to each room and visitors can really see every single project in a
powerful way and discover each artist.”
Each room offers a very different experience. For example,
Enoc Perez presents two large colourful canvases – made with a complex, layered
painting process, without the use of a brush – that interrogate the role of
painting today, meanwhile in another room, Jacob Kassay’s series of silvery and
mirror-like canvases hold the ghostly presence of the underlying painting while
also absorbing and reflecting their surroundings.
“I think visitors are positively surprised by these changes
from room to room. There is a changing rhythm, which is very interesting,”
Piccinini adds.
A version of this story was published in Prestige April 2019 edition.