A private story: photographs and contemporary art from the Cotroneo Collection

This exhibition, featuring just part of the Cotroneo Collection, marks the beginning of the Bilotti Museum’s exploration of the history of great Italian collections of contemporary art.

These works collected by Anna Rosa and Giovanni Cotroneo started their journey in Paris where, in 2006, they were exhibited in the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Here in Rome, in an exhibition entitled “A private story: Photographs and contemporary art from the Cotroneo Collection”, they are being shown in the rooms of what was once part of the Orangery of the Villa Borghese, now the Bilotti Museum, between 19 March and 25 May 2008 after which they will be continuing on to Spain to participate in Madrid’s Festival of Photography, and then to Mexico for the Festival of Photography in Guadalajara before heading off for other venues around the world.

The exhibition illustrates the great adventure of contemporary Italian photography in a series of works carefully selected by a couple who have chosen art as their life’s work.
The show, accompanied by a catalogue edited by Contrasto, follows the different legs of this their artistic adventure, starting with the first works bought by them directly from the authors and ending with their most recent acquisitions.

Anna Rosa and Giovanni Cotroneo are not just passionate and generous collectors; their own works are often also to be found in exhibitions or museums, Rivoli Castle in Turin and the MART in Rovereto being just two cases in point. Their purchases are not governed by fashionable trends but are purely a matter of personal taste, cultivated through their love of 17th century paintings and contemporary art.

The exhibition begins with one of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s famous mirrors, a “Family Portrait” depicting the Cotroneos’ and sets the tone for their entire collection, characterized, and deliberately so, by its “homely” nature. The grandiose panorama of Naples by Mimmo Jodice serves to make the viewer look further afield, to somewhere that is familiar but has not yet been explored.

The exhibition trail continues apace with a series of sections each with an entirely different feel. There is the weightiness of “Bread to kneed and transform” by Antonio Biasiucci or Silvio Wolf’s “Icons of Light”; the rarefied atmosphere of Luigi Ghirri’s “Fog” polaroids or Vincenzo Castello’s “Twilight”, the incessant “Rain” by Bruna Esposito or “Landscapes” by Paolo Mussat Sartor.

The city, magically silent, takes centre stage in Raffaela Marinello’s “Nocturnes”, only to explode in the colourful works by Franco Fontana. Gabriele Basilico, on the other hand, sees it fading away, whilst Francesco Jodice’s “Bagnoli” and “Tokyo” turn it into an exuberant fresco and the final cityscapes – Venetian vistas by Gianni Berengo Gardin are just pure, indulgent enchantment. Narrative becomes hard reporting in the hands of Ferdinando Scianna, whereas Luciano D’Alessando gives evidence, Sabrina Mezzaqui changes the pace, Beatrice Pediconi delivers a confusion of figures, Lorenza Lucchi Basili’s abstract representations are rigorous and whereas Luigi Ontani’s memories are prompted by objects, Paolo Ventura recalls a war that was never fought.

The next section of the exhibition is all about places associated with art. Grazia Toderi’s video is peppered with flashes, whereas Claudio Abate and Elisabetta Catalano’s work is based on their own personal experiences.
The human body is another focal point in this tale. It is seen as celestial by Vettor Pisani, vanishing by Roberto De Paolis and as thin, membranous-like sections by Paul Thorel, although this is completely contrasted by the final more light-hearted images shown floating away on the wind in Mario Giacomelli’s sun-kissed canvases.

Modern Italian photography and art are a complex confusion of connections that continuously blur the boundaries of the illustrated form. The installation, specifically designed for this exhibition by Alfredo Pirri is an all-enveloping synthesis of light and a flow of information that serves to underline that the whole purpose of art is that it should look at the world in a new and different way.

It is, therefore, a truly “private story” that the Bilotti is showing. It is effectively story of a collection that is inseparable from the private and sentimental life of Anna Rosa and Giovanni Cotroneo. A collection that is sustained by the strength of the couple’s relationship and their constant dialogue but which is generous enough to allow us, outsiders to their world, in so that we too can get to know some of the least known aspects of Italy.