Giuseppe Panza
Encyclopedia
Giuseppe Panza was one of the world's most prominent collectors of modern art
.. He lived in Milan
and Varese
, Italy.
in 1948 but never practiced. Instead, he built his career in the family businesses of wine distribution and property.
Panza died on 24 April 2010 in Milan.
. Initially, they focused on European and American painting and sculpture of the mid-1940s through early 1960s, purchasing works by European postwar artists such as Jean Fautrier
and Tàpies, and American Abstract Expressionists
such as Franz Kline
and Mark Rothko
. They were also among the first patrons of Pop art
, purchasing 11 of Robert Rauschenberg
’s “combines” of the mid-1950s, as well as works by Roy Lichtenstein
, Claes Oldenburg
, and James Rosenquist
.
In 1966 the Panzas turned their attention to Minimalist and Conceptual Art. They were amongst the first to acquire the works of Brice Marden
, Robert Morris
, Bruce Nauman
, Robert Ryman
, Richard Serra
, James Turrell
, Lawrence Weiner
, Joseph Kosuth
and many other major figures.
In an 1989 article titled “Una stanza per Panza,” Donald Judd
accused Panza of fabricating Judd works from sketches he owned without the artist's permission — let alone participation — and then installing them at the his ancestral home at Villa Varese. Other conceptual artists, including Flavin and Nauman, also took issue with some of the pieces that Panza had constructed from sketches.
failed due to cuts in the museum's budget.
Panza then arranged important gift and loan deals that greatly enhanced the collections of several American museums. In 1984, Panza sold 80 abstract Expressionist and pop works to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
, whose founding director Pontus Hultén
he had known since 1963 and at which he served as a trustee. The works were acquired for $11 million and formed the core of the museum's permanent collection soon after it opened in 1983. In 1994, Panza donated 70 items to MOCA by 10 young, local artists, including major sculptures by internationally known artist Robert Therrien.
Spearheaded by Guggenheim's then-director Thomas Krens
, who had been in discussion with Panza in 1986 during his tenure at Williams College Museum of Art
, the Guggenheim
, acquired, in a combined gift and purchase arrangement, more than 300 Minimalist sculptures and paintings in 1991 and 1992. Some of them were not purchased as physical objects but as Conceptual sculptures to be constructed from site to site. In order to pay for the $30 million package, Krens initiated a controversial deaccession plan, selling works by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky
, Marc Chagall
, and Amedeo Modigliani
at Sotheby’s in May 1990 for $47 million at the height of that art boom.
In 2008, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
made an acquisition of thirty-nine works from the Panza collection including multiple pieces by Joseph Kosuth, Robert Irwin, Robert Barry, Hamish Fulton, and On Kawara
, among others. That same year, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
acquired 71 artworks by 15 artists, partly as a gift from the Panza family and through funds from the museum’s special endowment for art acquisitions.
In 2010, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
acquired 25 of the remaining major works of Conceptual and Minimalist art from Panza's collection for an undisclosed price. Part gift from SFMOMA Trustees and part museum purchase, the acquisition included major works by Bruce Nauman
, Robert Barry
, Joseph Beuys
, Hanne Darboven
, Douglas Huebler
, Joseph Kosuth
, and Lawrence Weiner
.
About 10 per cent of his 2,500-piece collection remains in the 18th-century Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza at Varese outside Milan, where the Panzas installed an ever-changing show. The building has 50000 square feet (4,645.2 m²) of exhibition space and site-specific works by artists including James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Dan Flavin. Other artists shown in Varese include Ruth Ann Fredenthal, Allan Graham
, Ford Beckman, and David Simpson. Panza’s archive is divided between Lugano
, Switzerland, and the Getty Research Institute
in Los Angeles.
in 2011, artist Barry X Ball installed nine marble sculptures depicting Panza's head in different scales and surfaces at Ca' Rezzonico
.
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
.. He lived in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
and Varese
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
, Italy.
Life and work
Giuseppe Panza was born on March 23, 1923, in Milan. His father, Ernesto, was a wine distributor who invested in real estate and in 1940 was given the title of count by King Vittorio Emanuele III. He earned a law degree at the University of MilanUniversity of Milan
The University of Milan is a higher education institution in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 62,801 students, a teaching and research staff of 2,455 and a non-teaching staff of 2,200....
in 1948 but never practiced. Instead, he built his career in the family businesses of wine distribution and property.
Panza died on 24 April 2010 in Milan.
Art collection
Along with his wife Rosa Giovanna, Panza began building an art collection in 1956, when he bought a work by Antoni TàpiesAntoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...
. Initially, they focused on European and American painting and sculpture of the mid-1940s through early 1960s, purchasing works by European postwar artists such as Jean Fautrier
Jean Fautrier
Jean Fautrier was a French painter and sculptor. He was one of the most important practitioners of Tachisme.He was born in Paris. Given his unwed mother's surname, he was raised by his grandmother until her death in 1908, when he went to live with his mother in London.In 1912 he studied at the...
and Tàpies, and American Abstract Expressionists
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
such as Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
and Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
. They were also among the first patrons of Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, purchasing 11 of Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
’s “combines” of the mid-1950s, as well as works by Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
, Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
, and James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...
.
In 1966 the Panzas turned their attention to Minimalist and Conceptual Art. They were amongst the first to acquire the works of Brice Marden
Brice Marden
Brice Marden , is an American artist, generally described as Minimalist, although his work defies specific categorization. He lives in New York and Eagles Mere.Marden is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.-Life:...
, Robert Morris
Robert Morris (artist)
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, Robert Ryman
Robert Ryman
Robert Ryman is an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. He is best known for abstract, white-on-white paintings. He lives and works in New York.-Early life and career:...
, Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
, James Turrell
James Turrell
James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
, Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
, Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth , is an American conceptual artist. Kosuth lives in New York and Rome.-Early life and career:Kosuth was born in Toledo, Ohio. He attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962 and studied privately under the Belgian painter Line Bloom Draper. In 1963, Kosuth enrolled at...
and many other major figures.
In an 1989 article titled “Una stanza per Panza,” Donald Judd
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
accused Panza of fabricating Judd works from sketches he owned without the artist's permission — let alone participation — and then installing them at the his ancestral home at Villa Varese. Other conceptual artists, including Flavin and Nauman, also took issue with some of the pieces that Panza had constructed from sketches.
Distribution of the Panza Collection
When Panza began disposing of some of his collection in the 1980s, he first tried to do so in his homeland, Italy. After Turin had rejected it on the grounds of its American content, he turned to other international museums. In 1982, plans with Werner Schmalenbach of selling his collection to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-WestfalenKunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is the art collection of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, located in Düsseldorf. United by this institution are three different exhibition venues: the K20 at Grabbeplatz, the K21 in the Ständehaus and the Schmela Haus...
failed due to cuts in the museum's budget.
Panza then arranged important gift and loan deals that greatly enhanced the collections of several American museums. In 1984, Panza sold 80 abstract Expressionist and pop works to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
, whose founding director Pontus Hultén
Pontus Hultén
Karl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century...
he had known since 1963 and at which he served as a trustee. The works were acquired for $11 million and formed the core of the museum's permanent collection soon after it opened in 1983. In 1994, Panza donated 70 items to MOCA by 10 young, local artists, including major sculptures by internationally known artist Robert Therrien.
Spearheaded by Guggenheim's then-director Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens is the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City, and currently the Guggenheim's Senior Advisor for International Affairs, overseeing the completion of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi...
, who had been in discussion with Panza in 1986 during his tenure at Williams College Museum of Art
Williams College Museum of Art
The Williams College Museum of Art is a teaching museum located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is a department of Williams College. The museum's mission is to "advance learning through lively and innovative approaches to art for the students of Williams College and communities beyond the...
, the Guggenheim
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, acquired, in a combined gift and purchase arrangement, more than 300 Minimalist sculptures and paintings in 1991 and 1992. Some of them were not purchased as physical objects but as Conceptual sculptures to be constructed from site to site. In order to pay for the $30 million package, Krens initiated a controversial deaccession plan, selling works by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, and Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
at Sotheby’s in May 1990 for $47 million at the height of that art boom.
In 2008, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
made an acquisition of thirty-nine works from the Panza collection including multiple pieces by Joseph Kosuth, Robert Irwin, Robert Barry, Hamish Fulton, and On Kawara
On Kawara
is a Japanese conceptual artist living in New York City since 1965. He has shown in many solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976.-Early life:After graduating from Kariya High School in 1951, Kawara moved to Tokyo...
, among others. That same year, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
acquired 71 artworks by 15 artists, partly as a gift from the Panza family and through funds from the museum’s special endowment for art acquisitions.
In 2010, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
acquired 25 of the remaining major works of Conceptual and Minimalist art from Panza's collection for an undisclosed price. Part gift from SFMOMA Trustees and part museum purchase, the acquisition included major works by Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, Robert Barry
Robert Barry (artist)
Robert Barry is an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and performance art using a variety of otherwise invisible media...
, Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
, Hanne Darboven
Hanne Darboven
Hanne Darboven was a German conceptual artist. She became best known for her large scale minimalist installations consisting of handwritten tables of numbers.-Early life and career:...
, Douglas Huebler
Douglas Huebler
Douglas Huebler was an American conceptual artist.-Life and career:Douglas Huebler grew up in rural Michigan during the Depression and served in the Marines in World War II...
, Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth , is an American conceptual artist. Kosuth lives in New York and Rome.-Early life and career:Kosuth was born in Toledo, Ohio. He attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962 and studied privately under the Belgian painter Line Bloom Draper. In 1963, Kosuth enrolled at...
, and Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
.
About 10 per cent of his 2,500-piece collection remains in the 18th-century Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza at Varese outside Milan, where the Panzas installed an ever-changing show. The building has 50000 square feet (4,645.2 m²) of exhibition space and site-specific works by artists including James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Dan Flavin. Other artists shown in Varese include Ruth Ann Fredenthal, Allan Graham
Allan Graham
Allan Graham, who sometimes uses the name Toadhouse, is a contemporary American artist based in New Mexico...
, Ford Beckman, and David Simpson. Panza’s archive is divided between Lugano
Lugano
Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...
, Switzerland, and the Getty Research Institute
Getty Research Institute
The Getty Research Institute , located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J...
in Los Angeles.
Legacy
Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector, an autobiographical perspective on Panza's role as a collector was published by Abbeville Press in 2007. At the Venice BiennaleVenice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
in 2011, artist Barry X Ball installed nine marble sculptures depicting Panza's head in different scales and surfaces at Ca' Rezzonico
Ca' Rezzonico
Ca' Rezzonico is a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice. Today it is a public museum dedicated to 18th century Venice. - Design :Ca' Rezzonico stands on the right bank of the canal, at the point where it is joined by the Rio di San Barnaba. The site was previously occupied by two houses...
.
Sources
- Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector – Abbeville Press – ISBN: 978-0-7892-0943-6
- Panza: The Legacy of a Collector, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Texts by Kenneth Baker, Cornelia H. Butler, Rebecca Morse and Giuseppe Panza, 1999
External links
- Panza: The Legacy of a Collector
- Panza Collection at the Hirshhorn
- Panza Collection at the Guggenheim
- Giuseppe Panza papers, 1956-1990. Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California Collection documents the Italian businessman's activities in collecting works by some of the seminal American artists involved with abstract expressionist, pop, minimal, conceptual, environmental, and light and space art. The archive contains material dating from 1956, when Panza began collecting.