Lia Rumma, a women art dealer with galleries in Milan and Naples, has donated to the Italian government more than 70 works by prominent Italian artists. The works will be shown in a national museum in Naples. Many of the works in the gift are by artists associated with Arte Povera, a 1960s and 1970s movement in which artists created sculptures out of discarded materials such as soil, rags, rocks, and duct tape. They saw their work as being outside of the market. Vincenzo Agnetti, Giovanni Anselmo, Enrico Castellani, Luciano Fabro, and Michelangelo Pistoletto are among the 30 artists represented in the gift.
The works will be permanently displayed at the Palazzina dei Principi, a structure on the campus of the Capodimonte Museum, one of Italy's most important institutions. Its collection includes works dating from the 13th century to the present. Currently, the museum owns approximately 160 works of contemporary art. Rumma began collecting works by the artists in the early 1960s with her partner, the curator Marcello Rumma, while living in Salerno. He was among those who asked German Celant to curate "Arte Povera + Azioni Povere," one of the first significant exhibitions devoted to the movement, in 1968. Following Marcello's death in 1971, Lia opened a Minimalist and Conceptual art gallery in Naples, showcasing artists such as Joseph Kosuth and Enrico Castellani.
The Capodimonte Museum's director, Sylvain Bellenger, said in a statement that the gift reflects a time when "Italian art radically entered the contemporary world."
Selena Mattei