Giuseppe et Giovanna Panza

Giuseppe (1923-2010) and Giovanna Panza di Biumo are known as passionate and tireless collectors who over the course of more than fifty years built an extraordinary collection of contemporary art. Extraordinary for the artists included - Rothko, Kline, Tàpies, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Andre, Serra, Nauman, Kosuth, LeWitt, Weiner, Sims and Fredenthal, among others - but especially for its implied vision: an innate and bold capacity to recognise in each work its radical, peculiar content of truth, well in advance of the critics and art market. This volume is the result of a long conversation with Philippe Ungar between 2007 and 2009. In this cultured and moving dialogue, the inner need to discover and acquire works of art is revealed as an intellectual adventure and a spiritual journey but also as the creation of a familiar lexicon founded on the tenacious search for beauty through art.
Masterpieces from the collection are displayed in the world's most prestigious museums (from the Guggenheim in New York to MOCA in Los Angeles), in many cases constituting the original nucleus of the collection, as well as in the historic Villa Panza in Varese, now a FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano - Italian National Trust) property. The images that accompany the text are an attempt to recover, at least in part, the thread that unites them: the eye, the thinking and the wonder of two true collectors.