The Ca’ La Ghironda Foundation is a cultural center, the result of a decade-long project that involved the architectural and environmental restoration of a farmstead in Ponte Ronca, Zola Predosa. The institution is partnered with the local Municipal Administration to conduct guided tours and other cultural and artistic events. In the open-air museum area in the park, which covers 10 hectares and where fifteen thousand plants of local or naturalized species and some exotic ones have been planted, about two hundred and ten sculptural works by one hundred and ten Italian and foreign artists are distributed, including Cesar, Messina, Manzù, Ceroli, Cascella, Mastronunzio, Ghermandi, Yasuda, Mastroianni, Benetton Minguzzi, Monari, Stahler, and Zorio.
Ca’ la Ghironda was founded by the collector and artist Francesco Martani, who primarily wished to combine the natural balance of the farmstead with the artistic balance of outdoor sculpture located on the slopes of the Ponte Ronca park, displaying his collection of 20th-century and contemporary works, housed in the building adjacent to the manor house, designed by Renzo Piano. The sculptures are by artists active in the second half of the 20th century, both nationally and internationally, with a significant presence of sculptors from Emilia Romagna. The selection includes formal solutions expressed by sculpture in recent decades: figuration, abstraction, and conceptuality are documented with works expressing the various stylistic nuances of the authors within the expressiveness of visual language. Italian sculpture is represented by works of Virgilio Guidi, Giuliano Vangi, Luigi Mainolfi, Fausto Melotti, Giuseppe Uncini, Giacomo Manzù, Aldo Mondino, Pietro Cascella, Leonardo Santoli, Pietro Consagra, Toni Benetton, Mario Ceroli, Nunzio, Giò Pomodoro, Giuseppe Maraniello, Augusto Perez, and Gilberto Zorio; international contributions come from Arman, Nag Arnoldi, Cesar, Igor Mitoraj, Daniel Couvreur, Jacques Basler, José Carlos Balanza, Pavel Bukur, Anna Chromy, Tadeus Koper, Charlotte Morman. Particular attention has been given to the evolution of poetic languages rooted in Emilia-Romagna, featuring Mario Nanni, Sergio Zanni, Luciano Minguzzi, Carlo Zauli, Quinto Ghermandi, Ettore Colla, Angelo Biancini, Adriano Avanzolini, Luca Caccioni, and Francesco Martani.
A vibrant cultural center recognized by public bodies that collaborate and support its initiatives, the Ca’ la Ghironda Foundation, over time, has expanded the exhibition space adapting it to the growing collecting needs of its founder, who acquired works by modern artists from the 16th to 19th centuries, as well as 20th-century and contemporary artists; and a space dedicated to hosting and promoting temporary exhibitions of artists not yet widely known. Since 1959, hundreds of paintings and sculptures have been acquired by Francesco Martani, including works by Francis Bacon, Giacomo Manzù, Max Bill, Massimo Campigli, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, Giorgio de Chirico, Fortunato Depero, Giuliano Vangi, Fernandez Arman, Virgilio Guidi, Giuseppe Uncini, Lucio Fontana, Willem de Kooning, Graham Sutherland, Giulio Turcato, Renato Guttuso, Toti Scialoja, Paul Jenkins, Mario Schifano, Piero Manai, Fausto Melotti, Giuseppe Maraniello, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Umberto Mastroianni, Giorgio Morandi, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Marc Chagall. In 2005, the Foundation increased the number of works to further enrich the 20th-century section. In addition to his work as an artist and collector, Martani has served as organizer and creator, together with Giorgio Celli (deceased in 2011) and Giuseppe Cordoni, of Arte & città, an event that annually hosts authors from all disciplines and nationalities.
Regarding the painting section of the 12th edition, works were, as usual, exhibited at the former Church of Sant’Apollinare in San Giovanni in Persiceto, while sculptures by Anna Chromy, Cinzia Rossi Ghion, Harry Marinsky, Limor (Lido Moriconi), Luigi Mormorelli, Park Dae Ghiu, Meliton Rivera Espinoza, and Silvia Vendramel were placed in the public urban site of Piazza del Popolo in the same Municipality, under the title “From the play of forms to the forms of play,” while others by Giuseppe Bartolozzi and Clara Tesi, Franco Pegonzi, Adriano Bimbi, Lea Monetti, Rinaldo Bigi, and Veronica Fonzo were located in the atrium of the former SS. Salvatore Hospital on Via Roma. The exhibition activity has been intense and diverse: regarding the exhibition curated by Giorgio Celli, “Art and Nature,” group exhibitions of Bentivoglio, Bugani, Marchetti photography, followed by Gianni Valbonesi, Marco Tomesani, Tatsunori Kano, Agnese Baruzzi; the triple solo shows of Eco M. Boscheri, L. Leonelli, and G. Sevini; and monographic exhibitions of Buell, Angelo Dionigi, Fornaciari Dante, Mirta De Simoni Lasta, Octavia Monaco, Roberta Serenari, Danilo Mainardi, Guido Sammarchi, Carla Scotti and Marco Mensa, Alessandro la Motta, Nevio Bedeschi, Enso Sofia Rocchetti, Agnese Baruzzi, Claudio Bonfiglioli, Nicola Samorì; solo exhibition of Lamberto Caravita (2007), one dedicated to Francesco Martani, a photographic exhibition by Lodovico Pignatti Morano, Claudia Cuzzeri’s homage to Ulisse Aldrovandi, all three in 2008; solo shows by Sergio Battaroli, Monica Musiani and Rolando Gandolfi in 2009; Donatella Stamer, Beatrice Donin, Nicola Filazzola, and Enzo Tardia in 2010; and Giulio Mottinelli in 2011. Among collective exhibitions, “Neo Avant-gardes: from the 1950s to the 1970s at Ca’ la Ghironda,” “Wild Hearts,” “The Painted Mugello,” “Sculpture in Zola Predosa,” “Our Mother Earth,” “The Body in 20th Century Painting at Ca’ la Ghironda,” “Creative Practices in the Second Half of the 20th Century at Ca’ la Ghironda,” “International Art: from the 1980s to the Latest Generations at Ca’ la Ghironda,” “Bios,” “Beyond the Pillars of Hercules – Landscape Painting from Peruzzini to Klein,” and the exhibition “Art in Romagna: an Exploration” (2011). The 2008 program featured exhibitions of paintings by Stefano Grasselli, Franco Savignano along with the permanent exhibition “The Contemporary of the Contemporary” with acquisitions from 2000 to the present, followed by “C-Voltaire Fifteen Years,” curated by Francesco Martani and Franco Savignano with works by Karin Andersen, Totò Cariello, SquP, Yannis Kopsinis, Stefano Marchesini, Michele Mariano, Luigi Mastrangelo, and Gianni Pedullà. Also in 2008, exhibitions included “Reload. Affectionate Photographs 1972-2008” and “Provocations among the Clouds. Art and Comics: New Italian Dialogues.” In 2009, “Artistic Tribute to Woodstock” took place, an event in synergy with the Biografilm Festival, where artists from different generations directly engaged with the culture that inspired the poetic and artistic spirit of this great rock event, and its subsequent influence on lifestyles in the 1970s. In 2010, dual solo shows by Liliana Cano and Filippo di Mario and that of Ernesto Portas were held; in 2011, Ca’ la Ghironda hosted “Russian Fables,” “Jacques Brianti,” “Neo-Expressionism Plus Contemporary,” the solo exhibition of Laura Saccomanno, and “Measuring the Sea” by Antonio Noia.
Information about Ca’ la Ghironda
Via Leonardo da Vinci, 19 – loc. Ponte Ronca,
40069 Zola Predosa (Bologna)
051757419
info@ghironda.it
https://www.ghironda.it
Source: MIBACT
