REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY.-Saturday 29 September 2007 will see the opening – in the historical plant of Max Mara company, the Maramotti Collection of international contemporary art from the second postwar period to the present day. The entrance is free and only by booking on the phone or the Internet via the website www.collezionemaramotti.org.

An important selection of two hundreds artworks in the Collection, comprising several hundreds works all together, is therefore offered on display to art connoisseurs and lovers, following the desire of the founder, Achille Maramotti.

Since 1960s, his passion for contemporary art has made it possible to create and develop a collection which comprises paintings, sculptures and installations dated from 1945 to the present day, which represent some of the most relevant Italian and international artistic trends of the second half of the 20th century. An additional source of interest is provided by the fact that the artists are represented here by important works in their earlier years , in the phases where their work introduced elements of novelty in the contemporary artistic research.

The permanent Collection, on display on two floors in the old company factory in a layout comprising forty three rooms and two open spaces, starts with several important European paintings representing the expressionist and abstract trends of the late Forties-early Fifties, defined as informal movement, and a group of Italian pre-conceptual works (Fontana, Burri, Fautrier, Manzoni). Followed by relevant groups of paintings from the so-called Roman Pop Art (Angeli, Festa, Schifano, Tacchi), of Arte Povera in its double Roman and Turin articulation (Kounellis, Boetti, Merz, Penone, Pistoletto, Zorio, Anselmo) and Conceptual Art.

These works are followed by fundamental paintings of Transavanguardia (Cucchi, Chia, Clemente, De Maria, Paladino), relevant examples of German (Kiefer, Baselitz, Polke, A.R. Penck) and American (Basquiat, Schnabel, Salle) new-expressionism; then we find a group of works of the New American Geometry from the Eighties-Nineties (Halley, Scully, Taaffe, Burton, Bleckner) and the most recent American and British experimentations (Ritchie, Gallagher, Barry X Ball, Sachs, Essenhigh, Craig-Martin, Maloney).

The works made in the 21st century, which are mostly not present in the permanent collection, will be displayed in thematic exhibitions on the ground-floor area, for temporary exhibition projects.

The constant exploration of expression languages which are constantly evolving in fashion and art was always the encompassing passion of Achille Maramotti, a passion finding its ideal continuity in the family’s decision to make of this place a “work in progress” displaying and testifying of new artistic trends.

Till the year 2000, several artworks were on display in the Max Mara factory, which is now the home of the Collection, in order to promote a daily and stimulating exchange between artistic creativity and industrial design.

In order to testify of the close relationship between Max Mara and the art world, the Collection will house and present the works awarded with the biennial Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, for emerging artists from Great Britain.

During the first opening months of the Collection the winning art work in the first edition of the prize (2006), and titled Ninna Nanna/Lullaby, made by video artist Margaret Salmon, will be on exhibit.

The transformation of a production facility of fashion collections into an exhibition venue has been designed by keeping in mind the stark essentiality of the structure, which was conceived from the start as a flexible place capable of transforming itself according to changing needs.