La Ca’ La Ghironda Foundation is a cultural center, the result of a decade-long intervention that saw the building and environmental renovation of a farm in Ponte Ronca di Zola Predosa. The institution has an agreement with the local municipal administration to carry out guided tours and other cultural and artistic events. In the outdoor museum area in the park, which extends over 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 born from the will of the collector and artist Francesco Martani, who primarily wished to combine the natural balance of the farm with the artistic balance of outdoor sculpture, located on the slopes of the Ponte Ronca park, with the exhibition of his collection of works from the twentieth century and contemporary times, which found a home in the building next to the manor house, designed by Renzo Piano. The sculptures are by artists active in the second half of the twentieth century, both nationally and internationally renowned, 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 that express the different stylistic nuances of the authors within the expressiveness of visual language. Italian sculpture is represented by works by 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, and Augusto Perez, Gilberto Zorio; the international aspects include Arman, Nag Arnoldi, Cesar, Igor Mitoraj, Daniel Couvreur, Jacques Basler, Josè Carlos Balanza, Pavel Bukur, Anna Chormy, Tadeus Koper, Charlotte Morman. Particular attention has been given to the evolution of poetic languages from 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 lively cultural center, recognized by public bodies that collaborate with and support its initiatives, the Ca’ la Ghironda Foundation has expanded the exhibition structure over time, adapting it to the needs of the expanding collecting activity of its founder, who gathered works by modern artists from the 16th to the 19th century, and by artists from the twentieth century and contemporary times; and a space dedicated to hosting and promoting temporary exhibitions of artists who have not yet gained clear fame. 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 Köoning, 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 Mirò, and Marc Chagall. In 2005, the Foundation increased the number of works to further enrich the twentieth-century section. In addition to being an artist and collector, Martani also organizes and conceives, together with Giorgio Celli (deceased in 2011) and Giuseppe Cordoni, Arte & città, an event that annually hosts authors from every discipline and nationality. Regarding the painting section of the XII edition, the works were, as usual, set up at the former Church of Sant’Apollinare in San Giovanni in Persiceto, while the sculptural works of 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 the others by Giuseppe Bartolozzi and Clara Tesi, Franco Pegonzi, Adriano Bimbi, Lea Monetti, Rinaldo Bigi, and Veronica Fonzo were in the atrium of the former SS. Salvatore Hospital in via Roma. The exhibition activity has been intense and diversified: regarding the exhibition curated by Giorgio Celli “Art and Nature,” the collective photographic exhibition of Bentivoglio, Bugani, Marchetti was organized, followed by Gianni Valbonesi, Marco Tomesani, Tatsunori Kano, Agnese Baruzzi, the triple solo exhibition of Eco M. Boscheri – L. Leonelli and G. Sevini; also solo exhibitions of Buell, Angelo Dionigi, Fornaciari Dante, Mirta De Simoni Lasta, Octavia Monaco, Roberta Serenari, Danilo Mainardi, Guido Sammarch, Carla Scotti, and Marco Mensa, Alessandro la Motta, Nevio Bedeschi, Enso Sofia Rocchetti, Agnese Baruzzi, Claudio Bonfiglioli, Nicola Samorì; the solo exhibition of Lamberto Caravita (2007), the one dedicated to Francesco Martani, that of photographic shots by Lodovico Pignatti Morano, the tribute from Claudia Cuzzeri to Ulisse Aldrovandi, all three in 2008, solo exhibitions by Sergio Battaroli, Monica Musiani, and Rolando Gandolfi in 2009, those of Donatella Stamer, Beatrice Donin, Nicola Filazzola, and Enzo Tardia in 2010, and that of Giulio Mottinelli in 2011. Among the collective exhibitions, Neo Avant-garde: from the 50s to the 70s at Ca’ la Ghironda, Wild Hearts, Il Mugello dipinto, Sculpture in Zola Predosa Our Mother Earth, The body in Twentieth-Century Painting at Ca’ la Ghironda, Creative practices in the second half of the XX century at Ca’ la Ghironda, International Art: from the 80s to the latest generations at Ca’ la Ghironda, Bios, Beyond the Pillars of Hercules – Landscape painting from Peruzzini to Klein, Creative practices in the second half of the XX century, and the exhibition “Art in Romagna: an exploration” (2011) were organized. The 2008 program featured exhibitions of paintings by Stefano Grasselli, Franco Savignano, in addition to the permanent exhibition “The Contemporary of the Contemporary” with acquisitions from 2000 to today, followed by the exhibition “C-Voltaire fifteen years,” curated by Francesco Martani and Franco Savignano featuring works by Karin Andersen, Totò Cariello, SquP, Yannis Kopsinis, Stefano Marchesini, Michele Mariano, Luigi Mastrangelo, and Gianni Pedullà. Also in 2008, the exhibitions: “Reload. Affectionate Photographs 1972-2008” and “Provocations among the Clouds. Art and Comics: new Italian dialogues” took place. 2009 was the year of “Artistic Tribute to Woodstock,” an event in synergy with the Biografilm Festival, where artists from different generations directly engaged with the culture that animated the poetic and artistic spirit of this great rock event, and its subsequent influence on the customs and manners of 1970s society. In 2010, the double solo exhibitions of Liliana Cano and Filippo di Mario and the one of Ernesto Portas took place; in 2011, Ca’ la Ghironda hosted “Russian Fables,” “Jacques Brianti,” “More contemporary Neo-expressionism,” 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
[email protected]
https://www.ghironda.it
Source: MIBACT
