A four-year restoration and renovation of the Gran Guardia, this 17th century 
largest historic palace in the graceful city of Verona, was completed this 
month. 
A small but imposing exhibition of fourteen works by seven artists of the 300 
Panza Collection are on view.

AN ELEGANT DIALOGUE OF OLD AND NEW 
American Minimalism was nurtured and is celebrated in a 
historic Verona palace. 

By: Christopher Knight
Los Angeles Times Art Critic
Section: Calendar,Page: F-1,Art Review 
July 21, 2001 

VERONA, Italy -- In the mid-to late-1960s, Minimalism was the first art 
movement of international significance forged exclusively by American-born 
artists. More commonly associated with sculpture than with painting, 
Minimalist art banished representational imagery in favor of geometric form. 
It got rid of the pedestal, which had long elevated sculpture above the plane 
of daily human experience. And it embraced industrial fabrication, which 
eliminated the equally elevated touch of the artist's hand. 

Early 20th century Russian and Dutch Constructivist art influenced Minimalist 
artists. Yet something distinctly democratic and deeply American 
characterized these Minimalist traits. 

However, the first great collector of Minimalist art was not an American but 
an Italian. Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, a Milanese businessman who for 10 years 
had been acquiring Abstract Expressionist canvases by Mark Rothko and Franz 
Kline, hybrid painting-sculptures by Robert Rauschenberg and Pop works by Roy 
Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, went for Minimalism big-time. 

Actually it made sense: By the '60s Panza was keenly attuned to American art, 
but he was still an outsider. He could recognize distinctive qualities in 
such a radically new but profoundly American aesthetic while a hesitant 
American collector might still be busily trying to sort out the forest from 
the trees.

Whatever the case, Panza's enthusiasm for American Minimalism did not exactly 
endear him to the Italian art world of the day. It would be a very long time 
before contemporaneous Italian sculpture, which came to be called Arte Povera 
("poor art") for its handcrafted reliance on humble and earthy materials, 
gained substantial international support from other sources. But now that it 
has, Panza's long-standing affection for American Minimalism is not merely 
taken in stride in Italy, it's embraced.

Evidence for that easy reconciliation can be found in a somewhat unusual 
place. A four-year restoration and renovation of the Gran Guardia, the 
largest historic palace in the graceful city of Verona, midway between Milan 
and Venice, was completed this month. The 17th century palace is in the 
center of town, directly across the square from the 2,000-year-old Roman 
arena where opera singers have long since supplanted ancient gladiators.

Designed as a convention and trade center, the new Gran Guardia is being 
inaugurated by a small but imposing exhibition of Minimalist art from the 
collection of some 300 works Panza sold to the Guggenheim Museum in 1991. 
(The Rothkos, Rauschenbergs, etc., had been acquired by L.A.'s Museum of 
Contemporary Art in 1984.)

It's rather difficult for an American to imagine using an exhibition of major 
Minimalist art to celebrate the opening of an urban convention center. In 
conversation, several Veronese members of the art world likewise expressed no 
small surprise. Credit is given to the city's forward-thinking mayor, Michela 
Sironi Mariotti, and her diligent assistant, Giampiero Beltotto, for pulling 
it off. The result is so exquisite that the worthiness of the idea seems, in 
hindsight, obvious.

Fourteen works by seven artists are on view, including wall drawings by Sol 
Lewitt and floor sculptures made from metal plates by Carl Andre. Other 
sculptures from the earliest phase of Minimalism range from Dan Flavin's 
sequence of vertical white and yellow fluorescent tubes, "Untitled (to Henri 
Matisse)," made in 1964, to Donald Judd's 1973 horizontal wall sculpture in 
which eight progressively longer rectangular boxes of purple anodized 
aluminum alternate with eight progressively shorter voids of the same shape.

The radiant color in Flavin's fluorescent sculpture spills into the room, 
encompassing the space in which a spectator stands, while the spatial voids 
in Judd's sculpture assume a surprising physicality. Before Minimalism, 
sculpture had always had a distinct outside and a distinct inside. Here, 
those distinctions disappear. In Minimalist sculpture, space supersedes form 
as a concern; space becomes a fluid field that envelopes the perceptual 
apparatus of the viewer.

That's one reason Minimalist sculpture eats up gallery exhibition space 
faster than Starbucks gobbles vacant storefronts. At the palatial Gran 
Guardia, space is hardly a problem. Large, elegantly proportioned rooms--most 
with 36-foot ceilings--do just fine.

The renovation has given these palatial rooms simple oak floors, off-white 
walls and pale gray trim on the doors. It doesn't look industrial, but a 
stylish version of that vocabulary is blended seamlessly with the classical 
proportions of the 17th century building. Put a Robert Morris sculpture of 
repeated prism shapes, constructed from aluminum I-beams, into that 
environment and an eloquent dialogue ensues. The space-and 
spectator-enhancing sculptures make the rooms feel sumptuous yet scaled to 
human sensibilities.

In fact, Panza's initial interest in Minimalist art had something to do with 
his notion of its radical extension of older European traditions. At the Gran 
Guardia, an ethereal 1987 installation by James Turell offers a good example 
of Panza's view of historical continuity.

Turrell's "Night Passage" is installed in a large pitch-black room. After 
entering, viewers need several moments for their eyes to adjust to the 
darkness.

As they do, a horizontal rectangle of pale blue color begins to come into 
view at the far end of the room. The closer one gets, the brighter it 
becomes. Stand directly in front of the wide blue rectangle and it appears to 
be an indeterminate volume of colored cubic space hovering in the blackness.

The sculpture is actually quite simple. A rectangular hole has been cut into 
a false wall built several feet in front of the room's far wall. Blue 
fluorescent lights are hidden behind the false wall. The resulting perceptual 
illusion immediately recalls modern sources: Most obviously, the installation 
looks like a movie screen in a darkened theater. The cinematic story that 
unfolds, however, is a narrative of changing visual perception.

Seeing this work in Italy offers other potent connections that are not 
modern. One of the great treasures of Milan's Brera Gallery is Raphael's 1504 
masterpiece, "Marriage of the Virgin." The now-famous painting was 
commissioned for an altar dedicated to the Virgin's wedding ring. It depicts 
a Christian mystery told in the "Golden Legend."

Mary's many suitors were to present wooden rods to the high priest of the 
temple, who would give Mary's hand to the one whose rod bloomed. The image 
conjured by the miracle is sexual yet chaste, foretelling the virgin birth of 
Jesus.

Mary and Joseph are shown in the foreground of Raphael's painting, which is 
roughly as tall as a standing man, and they're flanked by other temple 
virgins and rejected suitors. The upper half of the painting is dominated by 
the classical domed temple. In the church--Raphael's patron--the central 
mystery of Catholic Christianity is housed and perpetually reenacted.

All lines in the composition lead to the temple door, which is wide open and 
positioned at the visual heart of the painting. You look right through the 
temple: The open door frames a clear blue rectangle of heavenly sky, which 
shimmers above the landscape beyond.

Turrell's perceptual environment of shimmering blue space is another kind of 
miracle, which has to do with a decidedly secular spirit. But the connection 
between these two works, separated by nearly half a millennium, is 
inescapable.

You see it again in Lawrence Weiner's 1971 text piece, which is printed in 
large, bold letters above a row of Palladian windows on a wall facing the 
grand staircase that takes visitors to the exhibition on the Gran Guardia's 
second floor.

"Over and Over Over and Over and Over and Over and Over" the text says. 
Recalling what might once have been carved into stone on a classical 
building's entablature, the work unfolds a commanding sense of poetic 
continuity through time.

Not far from the Gran Guardia is San Zeno Maggiore, arguably the finest 
Romanesque church building in Northern Italy, started in the 9th century and 
with a magnificent 12th century bronze portal. Over the free-standing main 
altar is Andrea Mantegna's beautiful painting of the Virgin and Child 
surrounded by saints. The painting was made and taken to San Zeno's altar 
about 600 years after the place was built.

For Verona maybe it's not that unusual after all to rededicate an old 
building with new art. Over and over over and over ....

Gran Guardia, Piazza Bra, Verona, Italy, through October.