24.01.2025
Kunstbibliothek
Collector Egidio Marzona has once again made a significant gift to the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library). He presented 22 first books to the Kunstbibliothek at the conclusion of the exhibition The Very First Edition: Artists’ Books from the Marzona Collection which will close at the Neue Nationalgalerie on Sunday, 26 January 2025.
The books – works from the 1960s – are extremely rare, with only a few copies having been printed in some cases. Such books cannot be found in public libraries and are rarely represented in art collections. They include Carl Andre’s first book, First Five Poems (1959); Bruce Nauman’s first book, Pictures of Sculpture in a Room (1965–66), a volume that is impossible to find and listed as an independent artwork in the artist’s catalogue raisonné; and Lawrence Weiner’s first exhibition catalogue, which is so rare that even the artist himself doesn’t have a copy.
In addition, there are publications by Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Marcel Broodthaers, Hanne Darboven and Gordon Matta-Clark. Particularly noteworthy is the legendary box edition of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Industriebauten, published concurrently with their exhibition in Mönchengladbach in 1968 and containing ten hand-printed photographs.
The books are an outstanding enhancement to the Marzona collection acquired in 2002. At that time, Marzona had included the associated archive containing artists’ books, editions and catalogues, magazines, posters, invitation cards, photographs from exhibitions, vinyl records, films, and letters in his gift to the Kunstbibliothek. The diversity of concepts, forms and materials in the art of the 1960s had motivated the collector very early on to preserve the multifaceted network of artistic ideas in a comprehensive “encyclopaedia of art from 1966 to 1978”.
Moritz Wullen, director of the Kunstbibliothek
Egidio Marzona’s collection has represented a unique network of modern art within the context of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin collections for years. With the collector’s help, it has been possible to close considerable gaps in the presentation of art from the 1960s and 1970s. In 2014, Marzona gave the Nationalgalerie and the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) 372 important works of Conceptual Art, Minimal Art and Arte Povera. As early as 2002, Egidio Marzona gave the Kunstbibliothek unique archival holdings relating to the art of the 1960s and 1970s.