MARINO CETTINA COLLECTION OF CONTEMPORARY ART |
A selection of artworks from a private collection |
Loža Gallery Koper, 23.06.2023 – 22.09.2023 | Opening: Friday, June 23, 2023, at 7 p.m. |
Curated by: Tatjana Sirk
The exhibitions Marino Cettina Collection of Contemporary Art presents a selection of works from the private collection of the late gallerist and collector from Umag in Croatia. His engagement in the field of art was also closely connected with art and artists from Slovenia and beyond. Another reason for the presentation of the collection in the Piran Coastal Galleries is his long-time collaboration with the galleries, then under the leadership of Anton Biloslav with the professional support of Andrej Medved. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Croatian gallery was an important art venue.
In 1985, on Dante Alighieri street in Umag, Marino Cettina (1959–1998) opened the Cafè-Gallery Dante next to his restaurant. This was the first private gallery in Croatia and one of the first in Eastern Europe. With an ambitious and grand programme the gallery saw instant success. It became a venue for gatherings and internationally resounding cultural and artistic projects: they hosted literary evenings, concerts, and performances; with its bold, always topical, occasionally even visionary exhibitions, the gallery soon drew attention outside the small town, too. In 1996, the gallery moved to a new, larger space (Stella Maris, Umag) and was re-named Galerija Dante Marino Cettina.
Cettina was an honest and sociable person, an excellent host, and a skilful and passionate connoisseur of contemporary art. He was a gallerist, curator, editor, and organiser who was determined to make his dream and ambition to put Umag on the international art map come true. His money and the immense energy that he, as a constantly restless person, perpetually radiated was invested in the art and international promotion of contemporary artists from Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. In his gallery, he confidently hosted world-famous names from the USA (Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andres Serrano, Zoe Leonard, Robert Gober, and Jack Pierson), Great Britain (Young British Art: Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Gillian Wearing), and other countries. He liaised with renowned Croatian and foreign art critics and gallerists, was eager to listen to their experience and expert advice, and personally engaged them in his artistic adventure. He relentlessly followed the events of the art world at home and abroad and often travelled to New York, where he visited the galleries and made friends with the famous gallerist Leo Castelli. He was closely connected to the artists he presented in his gallery and promoted elsewhere, who, from the very beginning, included many Slovenian authors. He paid special attention to young and promising, still unknown artists.
It is practically logical that, in addition to the rich exhibition activities, he also conceived with his knowledge, intuition, and commitment his own art collection. It was always done with the clear purpose and goal to create a high-quality plural collection of contemporary art that would remain in Umag. The collection includes 47 art works by 34 artists (individuals, tandems, groups) and in its diversity unifies different expressive media: classical and digital photographs, mixed techniques, acrylic paintings, drawings, graphics, sculptures, objects, and installations. In his selection, Cettina, always thrilled about new and avantgarde approaches, focused on engaged artists who dived deep into the current topics of contemporary visual art and society. In the collection, Croatian artists of different generations prevail but are accompanied by recognised Slovenian and great internationally renowned names:
Boris Cvjetanović, Vlasta Delimar, Sandro Đukić, Marijan Jevšovar, Dušan Jurić, Ivana Keser, Ivan Kožarić, Goran Petercol, Dubravka Rakoci, Neli Ružić, Edita Schubert, Sofijasilvia (Silvia Potočki), Mladen Stilinović, Olja Stipanović, Slaven Tolj, Goran Trbuljak, Ksenija Turčić, Ivana Vučić (Croatia); Goran Bertok, Rajko Bizjak, Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid, IRWIN, Marko Modic (Slovenia); Giancarlo Dell'Antonia, Fabrizio Plessi (Italy); Barbara Holub (Austria); Robert Gober, Zoe Leonard, Bruce Nauman, Jack Pierson, Andres Serrano (USA); Masaki Hirano (Japan); Alexander Brener, Vadim Fishkin (Russia).
Marino Cettina died in the middle of big plans and much too early. After his death, his wife Dezi Cettina, who had always supported him in his decisions and shared his great passion, continued his mission. Until 2013, when the gallery closed its doors, more than a hundred exhibition projects, international presentations, and other art programmes took place there which marked the thirty-years of the gallery’s story. Numerous efforts to accurately evaluate and preserve the gallery and collective work of Marino Cettina include publications and presentations of the collection.
The Marino Cettina Collection of Contemporary Art and the gallery documentary material is today carefully kept by his wife Dezi Cettina and the family. His great desire and intention that the collection be permanently presented in Umag, has until today, 25 years since Marino’s death, not been realised. Occasional presentations are thus all the more important. A selection from the collection was presented for the first time in 2007 in Umag (Galerija Marin, Archeotrade), while the collection as a whole was presented in 2020 in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria in Pula.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue with reproductions of the works of all the artists represented in the collection. The presentation of the collection and the publication with rich documentation, expert articles, and personal, even friendly records of numerous well-known people in the field of art (visual artists, critics, curators, and others) once again brought attention to the importance of the gallery work of Marino Cettina and the priceless value of the private art collection in the regional, national, and international space. This is also the purpose of its first presentation in Slovenia taking place in Piran Coastal Galleries.
A great tribute to the gallerist was the first and most extensive book entitled Gallery (Dante) Marino Cettina – Future Perspectives from 2001. It was edited by Dr Marina Gržinić, an internationally renowned philosopher, theoretician, and artist who collaborated intensively with Cettina in the 1990s. The publication involving extensive documentation and a biography presents the rich activities of the gallery in the first fifteen years of its operation, which then became Galerija Marino Cettina, and the gallerist’s multifaceted personality. Through essays by European and American writers, curators, art critics, theoreticians, and artists it opens perspectives to the world of art and culture. Hence, it is a testament and simultaneously a manifesto of art, critique, and cultural strategies for the third millennium, says in her introduction Marina Gržinić, who must take special credit for the publication of the book.
Sources:
BREJC, Tomaž: Likovna zbirka Faktor banke v letu 2000, Factor banka d. d., Ljubljana, 2000.
GRŽINIĆ, Marina (ed.): Gallery (Dante) Marino Cettina – Future Perspectives, Marino Cettina Gallery, Umag, 2001.
GRŽINIĆ, Marina (ed.): Collection of Contemporary Art Marino Cettina and selection of works of the new Croatian and Slovenian contemporary art scene, Marino Cettina Gallery, Umag, 2007.
GRŽINIĆ, Marina (ed.) in collaboration with MILIČEVIĆ MIJOŠEK, Ketrin: Collection of Contemporary Art Marino Cettina, Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria, Pula, 2020.
When in Doubt, Go to the Museum, City Museum of Ljubljana, Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 2021.
IRWIN, NSK Consulate Umag, 1994
Photo: Franci Virant
ANDRES SERRANO
Madonna and Child, 1987
cibachrome, silicone, plexiglas, woodframe
101, 6 x 69, 9 cm; framed 114, 3 x 83, 2 cm, Ed. 9 /10
Photo: courtesy the artist
DUBRAVKA RAKOCI
Black, 1994
acrylic on canvas, R 600 cm
Umago: on the facade 600 x 430 cm
Photo: Boris Cvjetanović
