Art Collection
Started by Luisa and Alessandro Bargiacchi with Il Battistero in 1991 by Silvio Loffredo, the collection was enriched over time with numerous important works of art by contemporary artists. Other pieces were added, La Venere Nera and other works by Fernando Farulli, one of the main representatives of Italian New Objectivity and some works by Lucio Venna, a "Second" Futurism artist, and Piero Leddi, who worked during the Milanese Essentialism of the Sixties.
The collection expanded to include paintings by Arturo Carmassi, the protagonist of Informal European art post World War II, with the Grande Composizione Arancio e Blu from 1951 and other works from the periods that followed. With these non-figurative lines, the collection also made way for Giulio Turcato canvases, including the splendid Superficie Lunare from the Sixties and Antonio Corpora, with a real masterpiece, Vele e Gabbiani dell'Isola D'amore from 1973, and the wonderful mixed media paintings on cardboard from 1961/62.
Some of the works of the Forma 1 artists belong to the sixties: Bellosguardo by Piero Dorazio, 1964 and La storia dei brevi by Achille Perilli, 1966.
Non figurative artists form part of the collection including Gerardo Rueda, a representative of Informal Spanish art from the Fifties, the Chinese Hsiao Chin, one of the first artists to have joined traditional oriental painting with western styles, right up to the six very fine etchings in classic style by Lucio Fontana. The collection also includes artists from Piazza del Popolo: Schifano with the brilliant Palma e un Futurismo Rivisitato, a canvas from the early Seventies; "Tano Festa", some valuable paintings on paper from the early Sixties and the rarefied Paesaggio from 1971.
There are also paintings by Aldo Mondino, Tricolore, a 1964 collage, a large canvas from the seventies, I Ton Collage of art and an ironic 1989 self-portrait, Mon Dine. Also of note is the group of large drawings and small sculptures by Mauro Staccioli who, along with Hidetoshi Nagasawa (Japanese artist, Italian by adoption) and Giuseppe Spagnulo, also in the collection, represent one of the highlights in Italian sculpture of the seventies. The collection culminates in a large painted and inlaid panel by Joe Tilson, one of the leading representatives of British Pop Art, Proscimeni for Demeter dated 1982.
This corpus is accompanied by the classic abstract markings of a Luigi Veronesi painting, the chromatic tension of Giulia Napoleone, the sculptures-paintings full of bitter irony by Godwin Ekhard, Kokoscha pupil Austrian artist, the post-informal painting of Mauro Betti, Noriaki Takahashi and Angelo Borgese, the traditionally surreal sophisticated paintings by Cesare Paolantonio and those in the wake of Pop by Gianni Dorigo.