Sonnabend Collection: Contemporary Art Finds Home in Mantua, Italy

The Sonnabend Collection, featuring Warhol, Johns & Koons, finds permanent home in Mantua's Palazzo della Ragione. A vital addition to Italy's contemporary art scene, showcasing American art's influence.

While Mantua is renowned for its middle ages and Renaissance buildings, having among the most vital art collections of the 2nd half of the 20th century places the city on the worldwide contemporary art map. Codognato likewise emphasises the collection’s significance at a much more regional degree.

A New Home for the Sonnabend Collection

The brand-new art gallery is a partnership in between the Sonnabend Collection Structure, the community of Mantua and Marsilio Arte, which will handle administration of the space along with the city. Nearly 100 works by artists whom Sonnabend revealed and gathered early in their careers– consisting of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Merz, Gilbert & George, Donald Judd, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons– will certainly be exhibited in 11 contemporary galleries created by Federico Fedel within the palazzo’s grand hall. The place additionally includes a short-lived exhibit gallery, screening Warhol films for its initial show, as well as a bookshop and an educational department.

Ileana Sonnabend: A Visionary Collector

Codognato compares Sonnabend to the Renaissance collector Isabella d’Este, the other half of Mantua’s leader. “To be a lady and a collection agency of the art of her time was incredibly unusual,” he explains. “Because feeling, there is a connection with Ileana’s remarkable eye which she was able to see first the greatest artists of her time.”

“In Italy, we still lack vital public collections of that duration, particularly American art,” he says. “This provides the possibility to art trainees from throughout the country to come to see the works of very pertinent artists.”

While sections of the collection got on long-lasting loan at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples from 2005 to 2012, and then at Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, from 2013 to previously this year, the entire group of works has actually not been displayed with each other until now.

Mario Codognato, the previous principal curator of the Naples gallery and long-lasting friend to the Sonnabend household, knew of their desire to discover an actual home for the collection in addition to passion within the Mantua community in changing using Palazzo della Ragione right into something significant and irreversible. Codognato played matchmaker and is now functioning as the director of the Sonnabend Collection Mantua.

The individual collection of Ileana Sonnabend, a cutting-edge art dealer that promoted generations of rising artists in the United States and Europe from the late 1950s till her death in 2007 at age 92, now has a dedicated, long-lasting home in Mantua, Italy. On 29 November, Sonnabend Collection Mantova (Mantua) opens to the public in the renovated Palazzo della Ragione, a famous 13th-century building in the city centre that has previously acted as a city center, a courthouse, a market and an event space.

Mantua: A Hub for Art and Culture

“I always saw the collection as a sort of biography and picture of Ileana,” states Antonio Homem, the previous director of the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. He started operating in the supplier’s original Paris gallery in 1968 and was adopted by Sonnabend and her second husband, Michael, in the late 1980s. After the dealer’s death, Homem, together with the late Nina Sundell, Ileana’s little girl with her initial partner, Leo Castelli, and Ileana’s granddaughter Margaret Sundell, chose a nucleus of jobs “that we really felt preserved the narrative of the collection”, Homem states.

“The concept of having the Sonnabend Collection in an area particularly developed for it in the Palazzo della Ragione, next door to the Ducal Royal Residence and its Mantegna room and not much from the Palazzo Te and its Giulio Romano frescoes, was as well remarkable to withstand,” Homem claims.

The new art gallery is a collaboration between the Sonnabend Collection Foundation, the town of Mantua and Marsilio Arte, which will certainly handle monitoring of the room alongside the city.” I constantly saw the collection as a kind of biography and picture of Ileana,” states Antonio Homem, the previous director of the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. After the dealer’s fatality, Homem, with each other with the late Nina Sundell, Ileana’s little girl with her first other half, Leo Castelli, and Ileana’s granddaughter Margaret Sundell, selected a core group of jobs “that we felt maintained the story of the collection”, Homem claims.