Collezione Donata Pizzi was founded with the purpose of promoting the discovery and understanding of the most outstanding and original Italian female practitioners, spanning from the mid-sixties to our present day.
The collection – unique in its field – is comprised of photographic works produced by more than 70 photographers from a wide range of approaches and backgrounds, from the pioneering works of Paola Agosti, Letizia Battaglia, Lisetta Carmi, Elisabetta Catalano, Carla Cerati, Paola Mattioli, Marialba Russo, to the recent experimentations showcased between the 90’s and the present day by Marina Ballo Charmet, Silvia Camporesi, Monica Carocci, Gea Casolaro, Paola Di Bello, Luisa Lambri, Raffaela Mariniello, Marzia Migliora, Moira Ricci, Alessandra Spranzi and many more.
The heavy influx of female photographers, photojournalists and artists within the Italian cultural circuit traces back to the 1970’s: since then the access for women to the art and photojournalism world – fields that up to that point had been almost exclusively dominated by men – has been favoured by swift socio-political changes and new issues brought up by the feminist movement.
Thanks to the achievements of that generation, today female photographers and artists have acquired strong positions at International level. Their work is shown in museums, galleries, festivals, magazines and publications, both in Italy and abroad. Despite this firm change of course, the disparity in gender is still present and the story and practice of numerous female photographers still needs to be discovered and championed.
The awareness of this deficiency within Italian photographic culture, the evident disregard by public institutions, collectors and critics, has pushed Donata Pizzi to start her collection.
The works that compose the collection bear witness to the significant moments that have occurred in the last 50 years within the history of Italian photography by bringing to the forefront the conceptual, aesthetic and technological developments that have shaped this time-frame. The central role of the body and its transformations, the need to give a voice to personal experiences of day-to-day and family life, the relationship between private and collective memory, are all building blocks that link seemingly distant images in genre and time-frame, bridging documentary images and those constructed through an experimental approach.
