RAMO COLLECTION

Collezione Ramo, Milan from collectorspace on Vimeo.

Jannis Kounellis’s Untitled (1976) consists of a burn mark on paper. Using fire—a metaphor for both punishment and purification—, the artist produces a hole on the surface, allowing the viewer to peek through the sheet of paper—material for the artwork. Untitled stands out as an early work by Kounellis, who is a protagonist of Arte povera, the avant-garde movement that emerged in Italy in the late 1960s. Using naturally derived materials such as earth, stone, fire, and gold, as well as found objects such as bedframes, windows, and doorways, Kounellis has left a permanent mark on contemporary art by pushing the medium of painting into a new territory.

collectorspace brings Untitled from Collezione Ramo, based in Milan, Italy. The collection focuses on works on paper—be it preparatory drawings or autonomous artworks—as a primary form of expression. The collector and his team take their starting point as the historical avant-gardes of their home country, and set out to document the diverse stylistic approaches of the 20th century. The collection also acts as a depository of exhibition catalogues and artists’ publications, which ground the works in art history, exhibition history, as well as social history of the artists it brings together. Taking on the responsibility of preserving and exhibiting works on paper, Collezione Ramo seeks to raise awareness of the remarkable achievements in this often overlooked medium.

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Jannis Kounellis (b. 1936, Piraeus, Greece) has been living in Rome, Italy since 1956. He exhibited for the first time in 1960, and is among the artists who have been associated with Arte povera movement since 1967. With a career spanning more than 40 years, Kounellis’s works are included in many public collections, such as Tate Modern, London; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Recent solo exhibitions took place at Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne (2014) and the Fondazione Volume, Rome (2013).

Based in Milano, Collezione Ramo is a collection of works on paper. Initiated by Giuseppe Rabolini, the collection consists of more than 600 works from the early 1900s onwards, focusing on artists who have been part of historical avant-gardes in Italy. The collection currently hosts works by more than 110 artists, such as Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Lucio Fontana, Mario Sironi, and Fausto Melotti, among many others. For the first time, Collezione Ramo was opened to the public through Milanesi si diventa, an exhibition curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli at the collection’s office space in Milan in April 2015, which displayed 28 works that trace historical itineraries of artistic production in the city between 1900s and 1970s.

Image courtesy of Collezione Ramo, Milan.