Inediti | Collezione Brodbeck
curated by Gianluca Collica

Artists: Enzo Cacciola, Barbara Cammarata, Augusto Cantamessa, Roberto Crippa, Thomas Grünfeld, João Maria Gusmão and Paiva Pedro, Tamás Kaszás, Esther Kläs, Urs Lüthi, Andrea Mangione, Marco Mangione, Paolo Masi, Ryan Mendoza, Gerhard Merz, Carmelo Nicosia, Paolo Parisi, Alfredo Pirri, Maria D. Rapicavoli, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Ettore Spalletti, Erwin Wurm, Viola Yeşiltaç, Heimo Zobernig, Piero Zuccaro

The exhibition presents a selection of works by 24 artists acquired by Paolo Brodbeck and never previously exhibited at the Foundation. The marked heterogeneity of the collection makes it difficult to identify a single unifying thread; yet it is precisely this distance between artists and artistic languages that reveals one of its principal strengths. The collection emerges from a genuine passion for art, from first-hand experience and from encounters that, in many cases, resulted in immediate and resolute acquisitions.
Free from affiliations, trends, and prevailing fashions, the collection nevertheless makes it possible to identify thematic and linguistic affinities that intersect with some of the key developments in contemporary visual culture: from the modernist grid to the memory of places; from the heightened emphasis on authorship at the end of the twentieth century to artistic practices drawing their strength from the precarious conditions that have characterized society in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis; and, more recently, to the reconsideration of open and inclusive forms of narrative.
This trajectory is viewed from a privileged standpoint: Sicily. In this sense, the collection is profoundly Sicilian—not merely because it was developed on the island, but because it reflects Brodbeck’s sustained commitment to transforming Sicily’s historically peripheral position within the major international circuits of contemporary artistic research into a space of exchange and cultural production.
The Foundation opened in 2010, initially with the intention of becoming the permanent home of the collection. From the outset, however, its mission evolved towards a more ambitious role as a centre for contemporary artistic production and research. This shift was already evident in its first artist residency, undertaken with the German artist Michael Beutler. The Foundation chose to become an active participant in contemporary cultural processes, attracting artists, curators, and international projects while simultaneously supporting the creative energies of the region. This process has contributed to the emergence of a constellation of institutions and initiatives that, in different capacities, now form part of the contemporary cultural landscape of Sicily.
The collection is therefore also the expression of a specific cultural strategy: to internationalize the distinctive character of Sicily by creating a sustained dialogue between the international art world and the island’s creative community. Artist residencies constitute the principal operational instrument of this strategy, generating what is, with deliberate irony, referred to as the “Sicilian speciality”: a cultural model that is, in fact, a serious and tangible proposition, with significant social, political, and economic implications for the wider territory.
The exhibition also pays tribute to the thirty-year collaboration between Paolo Brodbeck and Gianluca Collica, director and curator of the collection, respectively, while recalling several figures who have played a significant role in shaping its trajectory: Giovanni Iovane, art historian and current Director of the Brera Academy; the artists Jan Vercruysse and Urs Lüthi; and Maria Colao, an audacious and perceptive gallerist and an exceptional talent scout.
Great collections are often driven by a powerful desire for possession. In Brodbeck’s case, however, this impulse has generated a different kind of energy: the desire to possess has been transformed into a desire to share, support, and ultimately give. Perhaps it is precisely this transformation—from the private impulse to possess to the public act of sharing—that constitutes the most authentic meaning of the collection and of its history.