Egidio Marzona died: obituary for the art collector and patron

That the invitation card to an exhibition was just as important to him as a picture by Max Ernst: That is a sentence that was typical of the art collector, publisher and patron Egidio Marzona. Because he had always collected both as best he could: the art of Max Ernst (and many, many others) – and the invitation cards, letters, brochures, posters and books that came with this art.

Egidio Marzona’s outstanding contribution to art history in this country consisted precisely in taking the by-products of works of art seriously as objects worth collecting: i.e. all the printed matter that usually ends up in the wastebasket at some point, while the actual works of art are given eternal values ​​in the galleries and depots of collections.

Marzona, who, in addition to surrealism, was particularly committed to conceptual art, minimal art, arte povera and land art, pursued a clearly formulated goal: the encyclopedic collection of this art in all its media manifestations. However, this did justice to these movements in particular, since in times of media reproducibility, works of art no longer only appear as originals, but, probably much more often, through illustrations on supposedly ephemeral, i.e. transient, printed matter produced for quick consumption. With these so-called ephemera, Marzona was also able to document the process of creation and the cultural context of reception.

That was only partly something he was born with. Born in Bielefeld in 1944 as the son of a factory owner, he had the material resources at home. His grandfather had already immigrated to Germany from Friuli at the turn of the century, and his father ran a concrete factory. But the family was not fond of art, Marzona once told an interviewer. Rather, these impulses came from an aunt who studied at the Düsseldorf Academy and was in a relationship with a Romanian from Constantin Brancusi’s circle, who was able to report directly from the heart of the Parisian avant-garde. The initial spark also owed a lot to the biographical and atmospheric surroundings, which can lead you to the core of the arts because they are inseparably part of it. In 1972 he founded a gallery in Bielefeld, then the art book publisher Edition Marzona.

Research archives like those in the USA were the model when Marzona sold off its holdings

Egidio Marzona was early impressed by the productive repositories of knowledge in the USA, by collections and research archives such as the Getty, which would later determine his patronage commitment as he gradually parted ways with his holdings.

The 600 works of art and 40,000 archive materials that he transferred to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in several tranches starting in 2002 will in future find a home as the “Marzona Collection” in the new building that is currently being built next to the New National Gallery. A donation of 1.5 million items of archive material also went to the Dresden State Art Collections, which extensively converted the baroque log house directly on the Elbe into the “Archive of the Avant-Gardes”.

Marzona also wanted to see this as a sign against tendencies such as the Pegida movement, which was active in Dresden at the time. Marzona’s commitment to the Saaleck workshops in Saxony-Anhalt was similarly politically based, precisely because they were once influenced by the Nazi politician and architectural ideologist Paul Schultze-Naumburg. Marzona had it expanded into an international “Design Academy Saaleck” in order to “transform it in terms of contemporary culture” – and not let it degenerate into a place of pilgrimage for ethnic circles.

The sculpture park that Marzona set up in Friuli was a gift to the Italian home region of his ancestors. Egidio Marzona died on Sunday in Berlin after a serious illness at the age of 82, as the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation announced.