Panza family donates 108 artworks to FAI for Villa Panza

The heirs of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo have donated 108 artworks to the FAI – Fondo Ambiente Italiano, significantly expanding the collection at Villa Panza in Varese. The donation, made by Rosa Giovanna Magnifico, widow of the collector, brings the total number of works at the villa to 249, making it the second-largest repository of the Panza Collection after the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which holds about 350 pieces. The newly donated works span 26 European and American artists, including Joseph Kosuth and Sol LeWitt, and primarily date from Panza's second (1968–1976) and third (1986–2010) collecting phases, focusing on minimalism, conceptualism, light art, organic art, and color. A four-year exhibition program begins this autumn, starting with the show "Ex Natura. Opere degli artisti della Collezione Panza (1982 – 2003)", curated by Anna Bernardini and Marta Spanavello. The exhibition features 46 works by ten artists, including Christiane Löhr, David Goerk, Richard Long, and Hamish Fulton, divided into ten monographic sections exploring the relationship between nature and form. Future exhibitions will examine dualities such as "rhythm and dynamics", "sign and message", and "light and color". Villa Panza, an 18th-century villa with a 33,000-square-meter park, was donated to FAI in 1996 along with 141 artworks and opened to the public in 2001.