Art Nouveau as the architectural trait-d ‘union, the commitment
to enhance the cultural wealth of the city as a
common trait between the two realities.
If Rome is the city of reference for classical art and Siena for medieval architecture, Varese can be considered one of the leading places of Italian Art Nouveau.
Palace Grand Hotel is certainly the most structured and rich example, but the city and its province are home to several other buildings where the graceful lines of the turn-of-the-century style defined the face of the middle-class neighbourhoods of the early decades of the twentieth century.
Real gems that define the city’s cultural identity.
In this architectural and artistic context, Villa Zanotti stands out. Today it is the head office of the Foundation Morandini, a true contemporary place, home of the artist Marcello Morandini‘s studio and exhibition gallery of a collection that hosts and enhances Morandini’s works of art, design and architectural projects.
The collaboration between the Fondazione Morandini and the Palace Grand Hotel comes about in an institutional context that aims to enhance the city’s role in the development of the cultural wealth that permeates the territory, capable of attracting a national and international audience made up of critics, curators and cultural operators, artists and gallery owners, but also citizens and lovers of culture in its broadest sense.
A concrete sign of this dialogue is the exhibition of some works by Marcello Morandini inside the Palace.
A few works by the master of Concrete and Constructivist Art are exhibited in the large corridor.
Among these is 689 – 2018, made in plexiglass in only 6 pieces as part of the fundraising project to complete the restoration plan for the new functionalisation of the Foundation’s exhibition spaces.
After this first contact, Palace guests will be able to admire the rigour of Morandini’s art in the Foundation’s large exhibition halls in the heart of the city: an extraordinary collection of works in which the artist measures the human dimension by identifying and generating spaces through an infinite geometry.
Surrounded by an extraordinary park with more than a hundred trees, Villa Zanotti is also the site of an Environmental Art project very important to Morandini, a romantic idea of union between the artist, art, the villa and the people.
A continuum between human work and nature that brings Palace Grand Hotel and Morandini Foundation even closer.
