History of the Gori Collection
The Gori Collection and the birth of environmental art
The Gori collection started in Prato in the 1950s Giuliano and Pina Gori frequented artists and art critics from a very young age.
Since the 1970s they have lived at Fattoria di Celle with their four children.
Their love for art and a trip in 1961 to the Iberian peninsula alongside critics Giuseppe Marchiori and Luigi Dania to the Catalan Art Museum in Barcelona were the basis for the birth of the environmental art project. At the Barcelona Museum, in fact, the encounter with a display in which the works were proposed within their original architectural context were an inspiration to Giuliano interested in the birth of a work designed for a space.
Environmental Art
In the spring of 1970, with the family’s move to the current site of the Fattoria di Celle in Santomato di Pistoia, a complex and ambitious programme of Environmental Art began, which began with the landscaping of the park and the consolidation of its appurtenances, and consisted in the realisation of projects for which space ceased its ritual role of simple container to take on the more important role of an integral part of the work. This allows the Collection to rigorously reactivate the relationship between artist and patron, which had been almost interrupted since the beginning of the 20th century.
The Inauguration and Opening to the Public
On 12 June 1982, the first sixteen works were inaugurated in Celle, ten of which were created in the park by the artists: Alice Aycock, Dani Karavan, Fausto Melotti, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Ulrich Ruckriem, Richard Serra, Mauro Staccioli and George Trakas; and eight were created inside the historic buildings: Nicola De Maria, Luciano Fabro, Mimmo Paladino, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gianni Ruffi and Gilberto Zorio. At the same time as the event, Giuliano and his family decreed the opening of the Collection to the public. Today, the Gori Collection still identifies itself in Celle as an interdisciplinary workshop that unceasingly continues a creative activity in which artists from different continents take part and is visited by visitors from all over the world.
Celle over time
The villa in Celle is a monumental complex that has gone through centuries of transformations and changed over time at the hands of different families. Traces of this history can still be read during a visit to the park.
