CAMeC - Centre of Modern and Contemporary Art

The Centre was opened in 2004 with the aim of preserving, exhibiting and promoting the civic collections acquired through the Golfo della Spezia Prize between 1949 and 1965; these have been expanded thanks to the generous donations of the Cozzani and Battolini collections.
Another aspect of the CAMeC’s mission is to host, communicate and study the expressions of the most important contemporary artists, with particular focus on the younger generations, via careful constant monitoring of contemporary developments.
The Art Management plans to create exhibitions with a high critical and cultural value, such as historicisation of 20th century artists and art movements.
Besides hosting debates and study days and more generally recording the culture of today, the CAMeC possesses an educational department which proposes art education activities for both schools and the general public. It is the only town museum that has organized art-therapy projects and labs since its opening.
The Centre of Modern and Contemporary Art of La Spezia is in the heart of the city and has three exhibition floors.

Cozzani’s collection

In 1998 Giorgio Cozzani donated to his city a conspicuous collection of artworks, made in about 50 years of passionate research. It is a unusual collection, with the absence of clear and binding passions and predilections, but rather supported by an open and forward-looking curiosity, by the need to constantly update and timely registration.
It is ultimately a huge mass sortie: about one thousand works, including sculptures, paintings, graphics, photography and outcomes ‘other’ of visual arts. Vanguards, movements, coalitions and famous secluded outsiders: when trying to draw a list in chronological order, we meet, in addition to a limited diversion nineteenth century, Expressionism, Futurism Second, the Blue Knight, Bauhaus, Metaphysics, Surrealism, Realism, Abstract Art in its many forms (from Abstract Classic, Concrete and Neoconcreto, in the lyric of the “Eight” and the like), the international Informal, Spatialism, the “Cobra”, the “Spur”, Pop Art international, New Realism, Kinetic Art, Optical, Minimal, Conceptual, Land, Poor, Body and finally Fluxus, Transavanguardia, the graffiti.

Premio del Golfo’s collection

The National Painting Prize dedicated to the “Gulf of La Spezia” was established in 1933. The conception and the organization of this contest is thanks to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti e Fillia.
A lively gathering of numerous artists, futurists second-generation and non, animate that memorable summer and signaled the interest of La Spezia for contemporary art. From this historical precedent, the resumption of the event views with the same title is divided from 1949 to 1965 and is restored from 2000 to 2006 every two years .
Distinguishing the purchase award formula, which he gives to the city about 250 works, the original core of the permanent collection hosted by CAMeC. Thanks to authoritative critical as the Award has logged and collected the complex events and the most significant outcomes of the Italian production and, since 2000, international (among other names we remember Accardi, Attardi, Birolli, Cassinari, Guttuso, Martin, Moreni, Morlotti, Pintaldi, Pizzinato, Prampolini, Reggiani, Santomaso, Scanavino, Sironi, Sauces, Turcato, Widow, Zwackman).

Battolini’s collection

Last in chronological order among the donations to the City of La Spezia, is the collection of Ferruccio and Anna Maria Battolini documents sixty years of activity in the art world and the “militant criticism”.
Critic, writer, author of epigraphs, passionate bibliophile well beyond the boundaries of his role as leader in the library sector, promoter of cultural events, exhibition organizer, Ferruccio Battolini has historicized the second half of the ‘900 artistic break. Its collection was formed thanks to the meetings, the knowledge and experience of a life spent among the artists, as evidenced by the numerous dedications.
Multiple and diverse the contributions, by some of the protagonists of the historical editions of the Premio del Golfo, La Spezia at the Group of Seven, to some of the most representative artists of the Italian art scene of the post-war period, such as Guttuso, Spinosa, Montarsolo, medlar. Works of the masters of the generation of the early ‘900, in the middle one and newer artists up to the present promises, historically document the origins of the city’s art tradition.