"Vartai gallery is pleased to invite you to a second talk Patronage and collecting contemporary art with one of the world’s most recognized art collectors Egidio Marzona and his son, a writer and gallery owner Daniel Marzona. The talk will be moderated by H. B. Andersen – the professor of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as well as The Vilnius Academy of Arts.
In the first talk on 7 September, 2017 TV journalist Tadas Jačiauskas were talking with three well known Baltic art collectors and patrons Riivo Anton (Estonia), Rolandas Valiūnas (Lithuania) and Janis Zuzans (Latvia). This time we are going to discuss the trends of collecting contemporary art, contemporary art market, tendencies, patronage and relationship with business.
Egidio Marzona was born in 1944 in Bielefeld, Germany and currently lives in Berlin. In 1960s he started acquiring works from his friend and gallerist Konrad Fischer. Later, in the 70s Egidio Marzona opened his own publishing house and started focusing on and collecting 20th century avant-garde and modern art. At the time E. Marzona himself was doing all the research for publications and began accumulating a great deal of material on or by artists on specific movements and periods of art development. For instance, he did a lot of work on the Bauhaus and photography and later on he set up an archive of about 40,000 letters, photographs, designs, magazines and catalogues.
Egidio Marzona has created one of the world’s most encompassing collections of conceptual art, minimal art and Arte Povera. In 2002 Marzona gifted his impressive collection to the Berlin State museums that have exhibited the works in an extensive series of exhibitions.
E. Marzona is currently working on an archival project that will become a study centre in Berlin. It is an archive on the avant-garde of the 20th Century from the Viennese Geometrical Liberty to Dada, Futurism, Expressionism and other –isms. There are around 1 million entries in his archive which include letters, manuscripts, publications, but it is unique since the archive also includes actual works like drawings, paintings or objects. In 2016 Egidio Marzona donated his archive of 20th-century avant-garde works to Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
Daniel Marzona was born in Bielefeld, Germany in 1969. He studied art history and philosophy in Bochum and from 2001 to 2004 worked as a curator at the PS1 / Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is also a co-founder of the Navado Press in Trieste, which publishes artist books and titles on contemporary art and architecture. As an author and editor he published numerous publications and books on contemporary art. His books "Minimal Art" and "Conceptual Art" were published by the art, architecture and design publishing company Taschen. From 2007 Daniel Marzona directed the Berlin branch of the Konrad Fischer Gallery and in September 2014 opened his own gallery at Friedrichstraße 17 in Berlin with an exhibition by Bernd Lohaus (1940-2010).
The Daniel Marzona gallery represents 15 international artists, such as Vajiko Chachkhiani, Matthew Buckingham, Nina Canell, Sofia Hultén and Bernd Lohaus, ect. The gallery participated in Viennacontemporary, Artberlin, arteBA, Art Cologne, Paris Internationale and other contemporary art fairs as well as various international projects.
Talk Patronage and collecting contemporary art is available for both, experts of the contemporary art and those who are willing to improve their knowledge on contemporary art. The Talk is held on 24 October 2017, 17:30 p.m. at Vilnius Teachers’ House (Vilnius st. 39) II floor. "
