The exhibition “Legacy: A Story of Love and Cultural Heritage,” from April 15 to November 15, 2024, at the Art Hotel Gran Paradiso in Sorrento, curated by Gabriella Esposito, hosts the collection of Cynthia and Renato Penna and is a testament to the friendship that binds them to Mario Colonna, the hotel’s owner, known for his visionary ability to create this place dedicated to contemporary art many years ago.
Alex Couwenberg, “Untitled”, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, courtesy of ART1307
Emanuele Magri: Cynthia, can you tell us how your adventure as a collector began?
Cynthia Penna: The story began in the late 1990s when my husband Renato and I started collecting contemporary art, diving into the study and discovery of a world almost unknown but magical and stimulating. I should clarify that until then we had focused on collecting works by Italian Futurists and Italian Geometric Abstraction from the early twentieth century. The contemporary art collection started with a lightning strike that both of us experienced in the early 2000s when we attended Arte Fiera Bologna: walking through the fair’s stands, we suddenly spotted a small work from afar that seemed to have a neon light embedded in it: a sort of wound of light emerging from the darkness. We approached to observe better and were struck not by electricity but by the discovery that it was a true acrylic painting on canvas. That searing beam of light that divided the work into two sections was formed by a progression of colors painted with manic precision, from very dark to almost pure white. We turned the corner of the Melesi Gallery stand that exhibited the work and within two minutes we bought it. Gallery owner Sabina Melesi introduced us to the art of Horatio Garcia Rossi and the entire history of the birth of the kinetic movement in Europe around 1958/60 and connected us with the artist, with whom we became friends until his death in 2009. Thus, in an unusual and somewhat extravagant way, we began a contemporary art collection of what is considered the most difficult and complex movement of the twentieth century, Kinetic Art, obscure to many and not immediately understandable, but magical for us because of the emotions it gave us.
Joe Davidson, “Untitled”, white chalk and gold, 250 x 90 cm, courtesy of ART1307
Can we talk specifically about the exhibition?
The exhibition is titled “Legacy: A Story of Love and Cultural Heritage” because it was born from the affection and esteem of Mario Colonna for us, and therefore it is a personal emotional bond, but also a kind of symbolic bequest that we want to dedicate to those who have been following us for about eighteen years on the path of our cultural association ART1307. The exhibition was born from an idea of Mario, also a collector of contemporary art and owner of the Art Hotel Gran Paradiso in Sorrento, who last year talked to us about his idea of organizing an exhibition of part of our collection to celebrate all that we have achieved with our cultural association over eighteen years of activity. For our friend Mario, what intrigued him the most was the fact that we had not limited ourselves to collecting art for our own visual and spiritual pleasure but wanted to share this pleasure with a broader audience and make our abilities available to help artists. We found in our archive works by sixty-seven artists that were available in Naples and asked the young art historian Gabriella Esposito to curate this exhibition of not easy setup and extremely varied in stylistic and conceptual terms. Gabriella Esposito is not new to these challenges as she has collaborated with us on several initiatives over the past four years, so she was the most suitable person to interpret us adequately. Thus, was born this adventure that sees us all involved in a celebration of love and cultural heritage.
Todd Williamson, “Untitled”, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, courtesy of ART1307
Can you now talk about ART1307, a cultural institution, a hybrid reality between an art gallery and a cultural association, an artist residence, between Naples and Los Angeles? How do you discover and relate to artists?
In 2005 we laid the foundations for what would later become our cultural institution, but it was only an embryo that we felt the need for because the passive accumulation of works for our personal enjoyment was no longer enough: we wanted to do more for the artists. In 2006 the American adventure began with a base in Los Angeles (a city we had been visiting periodically since the 1990s) because that immense crucible of art was almost entirely unknown in Italy, just as, conversely, it was for young Italian talents. Thus, in 2007, that bridge between Italy and California was born, producing, and realizing a connection that would have otherwise been eluded or at least delayed. Today I can proudly say that the adventure has repaid us in terms of great satisfaction, but I must add that the love for art has dragged us into a constant and continuous daily commitment, working between different continents, with different time zones and knowledge of rules and laws of different countries. Ours is an activity of research, relationships, and study: we relate to very varied souls who are not only artists but also public institutions, cultural ones like universities and schools, or other private institutions like ours; the difficulty lies in the fact that we are not present only in Italy but also in the USA and have relationships with Japan as well. Different methodologies in addressing problems, very different approaches, and solutions regarding various practical situations. All this enriches us but requires a commitment and resilience that are not indifferent. The artist residency we founded in 2012 in Naples was another step for us to bring artists, cultures closer together, to create relationships, but above all to build bridges between what we can consider “the Other, the foreigner” and our territory with our culture. Knowing the other is a source of connection, what you know automatically becomes partly yours, becomes part of your world and therefore you no longer fear it, you approach it with a free and non-prejudiced mind, you shed unconscious and unjustified fears and the other is no longer “other than you”. This is a fundamental value that we try to create with our international exchanges. The discovery of artists sometimes happens unexpectedly through direct acquaintance or introduction by other artists; other times it happens by browsing and surfing the web: there is no specific mode of access to our association.
Andy Moses, “Untitled”, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, courtesy of ART1307
What about your future projects?
There are many in gestation because the brain is always active, and then the beauty of this work is that inspiration for a new discovery or a new adventure catches you suddenly: at night when you can’t sleep, while traveling, watching a movie or reading a book; sometimes it happens that a light bulb goes off for a single phrase heard on the street. Among the future projects is an exhibition in September in San Pedro, near Los Angeles, to inaugurate the new space of an artist friend which will focus on “Art and Science: Interferences and Connections” this theme is part of what was launched by the Getty Center for the great California art event called Pacific Standard Time taking place for several months throughout Southern California. Then a major project with international photographers on Naples and for Naples which we hope to present in a public institution in the city next year. In progress, a workshop with American and Italian artists at the Art Hotel Gran Paradiso scheduled for November with curators coming from Los Angeles and New York. We also thought of another project on the history of food and its historical connections with the exploitation of peoples. And much more because all this stems from a fundamental belief that only art can elevate the human being to higher levels of spirituality and broader knowledge: in a historical moment like the current one which seems difficult to define as a mere euphemism, we cling strongly to art as an anchor that offers us the ability to see things and the world openly: a vision that protects us and frees us from brutality, human baseness and violence. Because as the great German artist Gerhard Richter states: «Art is the last form of hope».
Info:
AA.VV. Legacy: una storia di amore e di eredità culturale
15/04 – 15/11/2024
curated by Gabriella Esposito
Art Hotel Gran Paradiso
Via Catigliano 9, Sorrento (NA)
info@art1307.com
Emanuele Magri teaches History of Art in Milan. Since 2007 he has been writing abroad for Juliet art Magazine. Since the 1970s he has dealt with writing and visual arts. He created taxonomically defined worlds, in which he experimented with the self-referentiality of language, such as “La Setta delle S’arte” in which ritual clothes are made starting from words with multiple meanings, the “Treaty of genetic art” in which a series of plants is obtained from grafts of human organs, eyes, hands, mouths, etc., and the project “Fandonia”, a city where everything is double and hybrid.
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