Giuseppe & Giovanna Panza. Collectors. Interview with Philippe Ungar

Book excerpt: Giuseppe (1923-2010) and Giovanna Panza di Biumo are known as passionate and tireless collectors who over the course of more than fifty years built an extraordinary collection of contemporary art. Extraordinary for the artists included - Rothko, Kline, Tàpies, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Andre, Serra, Nauman, Kosuth, LeWitt, Weiner, Sims and Fredenthal, among others - but especially for its implied vision: an innate and bold capacity to recognize in each work its radical, peculiar content of truth, well in advance of the critics and art market. This volume is the result of a long conversation with Philippe Ungar between 2007 and 2009. In this cultured and moving dialogue, the inner need to discover and acquire works of art is revealed as an intellectual adventure and a spiritual journey but also as the creation of a familiar lexicon founded on the tenacious search for beauty through art.