Patrimonio culturale dell'Emilia-Romagna

The Ca’ La Ghironda Foundation is a cultural centre reflecting ten years of work that saw the building and environmental reconstruction of a farmstead at Ponte Ronca in Zola Predosa. The institution has agreements with the local municipal administration to conduct guided tours and other cultural and artistic events. In the outdoor museum area in the park, which covers 10 hectares and in which 15,000 local or naturalised flora and several exotic species have been planted, there are approximately 210 sculptural works by 110 Italian and foreign artists, including Cesar, Messina, Manzù, Ceroli, Cascella, Mastronunzio, Ghermandi, Yasuda, Mastroianni, Benetton Minguzzi, Monari, Stahler and Zorio.

Ca’ La Ghironda was established through the efforts of the collector and artist Francesco Martani, who was interested chiefly in uniting the farmstead’s natural equilibrium with the artistic approach of plein-air sculpture, set on the slopes of the park of Ponte Ronca, in order to display his collection of 20th-century and contemporary art. The works are housed in the building designed by Renzo Piano located next to the main residence. The sculptures are by national and international artists active in the second half of the 20th century, with a significant representation of sculptors from Emilia-Romagna. The selection includes the formal solutions expressed by sculpture in the past few decades: figuration, abstraction and conceptuality are documented with works that reflect the artists’ varied stylistic nuances within the expressiveness of their visual language. Italian sculpture is represented by the works of Virgilio Guidi, Giuliano Vangi, Luigi Mainolfi, Fausto Melotti, Giuseppe Uncini, Giacomo Manzù, Aldo Mondino, Pietro Cascella, Leonardo Santoli, Pietro Consagra, Toni Benetton, Mario Ceroli, Nunzio, Gio Pomodoro, Giuseppe Maraniello, Augusto Perez and Gilberto Zorio; international artists are represented by Arman, Nag Arnoldi, Cesar, Igor Mitoraj, Daniel Couvreur, Jacques Basler, Josè Carlos Balanza, Pavel Bukur, Anna Chormy, Tadeus Koper and Charlotte Morman. Special attention has been paid to the evolution of the poetic languages rooted in Emilia-Romagna, showcasing the works of Mario Nanni, Sergio Zanni, Luciano Minguzzi, Carlo Zauli, Quinto Ghermandi, Ettore Colla, Angelo Biancini, Adriano Avanzolini, Luca Caccioni and Francesco Martani.
The Ca’ La Ghironda Foundation, a dynamic cultural centre recognised by the public organisations that collaborate with it and sustain its initiatives, has expanded its exhibition structure over the years, adapting it to the growing collection requirements of its founder, who amassed works by modern artists from the 16th to the 19th century, as well as 20th-century and contemporary artists. There is also a space designed to host and promote temporary exhibitions by artists who are not very well known yet. Since 1959 Martani has acquired hundreds of paintings and sculptures, including works by Francis Bacon, Giacomo Manzù, Max Bill, Massimo Campigli, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, Giorgio de Chirico, Fortunato Depero, Giuliano Vangi, Fernandez Arman, Virgilio Guidi, Giuseppe Uncini, Lucio Fontana, Willem de Kooning, Graham Sutherland, Giulio Turcato, Renato Guttuso, Toti Scialoja, Paul Jenkins, Mario Schifano, Piero Manai, Fausto Melotti, Giuseppe Maraniello, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Umberto Mastroianni, Giorgio Morandi, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Joan Mirò and Marc Chagall. In 2005 the Foundation added more works, further expanding the section on 20th-century art.
In addition to being an artist and collector, Martani – along with Giorgio Celli (who died in 2011) and Giuseppe Cordoni – organises “Arte & Città”, an event that annually hosts artists of all nationalities working in all media. For the painting section of the 12th year, the works were again set up at the former church of Sant’Apollinare in San Giovanni in Persiceto, whereas the sculptural works of Anna Chromy, Cinzia Rossi Ghion, Harry Marinsky, Limor (Lido Moriconi), Luigi Mormorelli, Park Dae Ghiu, Meliton Rivera Espinoza and Silvia Vendramel were installed in the public urban site of Piazza del Popolo in the same town, with the title “Dal gioco delle forme alle forme del gioco”. Other works by Giuseppe Bartolozzi and Clara Tesi, Franco Pegonzi, Adriano Bimbi, Lea Monetti, Rinaldo Bigi and Veronica Fonzo were displayed in the foyer of the former hospital of Santissimo Salvatore in Via Roma.
The exhibition activity has been intense and diversified. For the show curated by Celli, entitled “Arte e Natura”, the collective photography exhibition of Bentivoglio, Bugani and Marchetti was staged, followed by those of Gianni Valbonesi, Marco Tomesani, Tatsunori Kano and Agnese Baruzzi, the triple solo show entitled “Tripla Eco” by Maurizio Boscheri, Luca Leonelli and Gianni Sevini, and monographic exhibitions by Buell, Angelo Dionigi, Fornaciari Dante, Mirta De Simoni Lasta, Octavia Monaco, Roberta Serenari, Danilo Mainardi, Guido Sammarch, Carla Scotti and Marco Mensa, Alessandro La Motta, Nevio Bedeschi, Enso Sofia Rocchetti, Agnese Baruzzi, Claudio Bonfiglioli and Nicola Samorì. Lastly, there was the solo show of Lamberto Caravita (2007), long with an exhibition dedicated to Francesco Martani, a photographic exhibition by Lodovico Pignatti Morano, and Claudia Cuzzeri’s tribute to Ulisse Aldrovandi – all three held in 2008. In 2009, Sergio Battaroli, Monica Musiani and Rolando Gandolfi all held personal exhibitions; in 2010 it was the turn of Donatella Stamer, Beatrice Donin, Nicola Filazzola, and Enzo Tardia; while Giulio Mottinelli held a personal exhibition in 2011. A number of collective exhibitions have been staged, such as “Neo Avanguardie: dagli anni ‘50 agli anni ‘70 a Ca’ la Ghironda”, “Cuori Selvaggi,” “Il Mugello dipinto”, “Scultura a Zola Predosa Nostra madre terra”, “Il corpo nella Pittura del Novecento a Ca’ la Ghironda”, “Pratiche creative nella seconda metà del XX secolo a Ca’ la Ghironda”, “Arte Internazionale: dagli anni ‘80 alle ultime generazioni a Ca’ la Ghironda”, “Bios”, “Oltre le colonne d’Ercole – La pittura di paesaggio da Peruzzini a Klein”,“Pratiche creative nella seconda metà del XX secolo” and the festival "Arte in Romagna: un'esplorazione" (2011).
The 2008 bill of events was characterized by shows of the pictorial works of Stefano Grasselli and Franco Savignano, and the permanent exhibition entitled “Il Contemporaneo del Contemporaneo” with acquisitions from 2000 through today, followed by the exhibition “C-Voltaire quindici anni”, curated by Francesco Martani and Franco Savignano with works by Karin Andersen, Totò Cariello, SquP, Yannis Kopsinis, Stefano Marchesini, Michele Mariano, Luigi Mastrangelo and Gianni Pedullà. The following exhibitions were held in 2008: “Reload. Fotografie d'affezione 1972-2008” and “Provocazioni fra le nuvole. Arte e fumetto: nuovi dialoghi italiani”. In 2009, the "Artistic Tribute to Woodstock" took place, an event staged in synergy with the Biografilm Festival, in which artists from different generations investigated the culture underlying the artistic and poetic spirit of this legendary rock festival, and its subsequent influence on societal customs in the 1970s.
A double personal exhibition by Liliana Cano and Filippo di Mario and a personal by Ernesto Portas were staged in 2010; in 2011 Cà la Ghironda hosted "Favole russe", "Jacques Brianti", "Neoespressionismo più contemporaneo" and a personal exhibition by Laura Saccomanno and "Misurare il mare" by Antonio Noia.