La Marrana environmental art

Established in 1996 by the will of Grazia and Gianni Bolongaro with the aim of to raise awareness people to contemporary art, the La Marrana environmental art park, spread over just over 4 hectares, has 37 works made specifically for and above all in the evocative and panoramic open air spaces of their home in Montemarcello, transformed by artists from different generations and cultures, such as Jannis Kounellis, Jan Fabre, Ettore Spalletti , Kengiro Azuma, Luigi Mainolfi, Claudia Losi, Gabriella Benedini, as well as to Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini , Mario Airò and Vedovamazzei and many others.

The peculiarities

The one created is a special place, for reflection but also for meeting, outside the usual meeting spaces: not a gallery, not a museum space but a private house which opens to the public on specific occasions.

A place where artists are invited to create works specifically designed to dialogue with the locations they themselves choose. The interventions of environmental art have always been developed with particular attention to the relationship that is created between the work and the territory in from which they are grafted, from which they draw inspiration and at the same time modify. To these interventions are added exhibitions dedicated to great artists or emerging figures.

The history of the Marrana

“In 1995 the new adventure began” explains Gianni Bolongaro. “Me and my wife, whose grandfather was one of the most important Italian art collectors of the 1930s, d we decided to introduce the inhabitants of Montemarcello to the figure of Carlo Mattioli, from Parma, who also had a home in Montemarcello but which no one knew as an artist. The following year we replied with Fausto Melotti ; the large participation of journalists, curators and enthusiasts made us decide to switch to environmental art. Thus began the story of La Marrana”.

Next year a video installation will be presented that will tell the story of the Marrana.

Art, architecture and urban interventions

Art, territory, villages but also cities. The P.A.A.L.M.A. La Marrana Arteambientale Artist + Architect Award was activated at the Triennale in Milan from 2008 to 2010 to promote urban interventions born from the collaboration between artist and architect right from the design phase.

Derivation of the award was the competition announcement for the redevelopment of piazza Verdi in La Spezia, won by the project presented by the couple formed by the artist Daniel Buren and by the architect Gianni Vannetti, who then together redesigned the ' current configuration of the city spaces.

The contemporary art is grafted onto the village

In continuity with the idea of ​​ to bring the experience of contemporary art to life by setting up the works in the village, not in closed spaces but in the midst of people, so that they can get close and share them in everyday life, p and the whole summer 2022 , until 18 September, the project Una Boccata d’Arte proposes a cultural itinerary, far from the most popular tourist circuits, to discover 20 Italian villages, one for each region, in which an artist has created a site specific intervention.

Read also: Una Boccata d’Arte: 20 artists, 20 villages, 20 regions

A close, authentic and fruitful encounter

Dear Montemarcello

Caro (Dear) Montemarcello involved the inhabitants in the story of the sense of community - and love - that pervades the village, through a participatory performance and a written in steel ( the word love , in fact) positioned on the portal of the defensive walls.

The art is a message, here it is of love

“My interest immediately turned to the intimate relationship between the person and the place, not so much on history or architecture, which I had previously studied, but on emotions, bonds and the whole emotional sphere linked to memories and to sensations” explains the artist Alice Ronchi.

“From the interviews with the inhabitants emerged contrasting images of the place all but united by a strong love for their country ; they talked about the village as if it were a person - from there my idea was born to ask him to write a letter or a thought addressed to him directly, in Montemarcello” concludes Alice.

“From the interviews with the inhabitants emerged contrasting images of the place all but united by a strong love for their country ; they talked about the village as if it were a person - from there my idea was born to ask him to write a letter or a thought addressed to him directly, in Montemarcello” concludes Alice.