Dance, music and site-specific sculpture: seven thousand square metres of creative magic
The Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre and Carla Fracci's ballet company. Rossella Bisazza describes the origins of her cultural and philanthropic passion.
by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
4' min read
4' min read
Rossella Bisazza grew up surrounded by a love of art and culture. She comes from a family of visionary entrepreneurs: her father Renato founded the company in 1956 in Montecchio Maggiore, in the province of Vicenza, producing a glass mosaic that would soon become a high-end material and an emblem of Made in Italy. Thanks to his far-sightedness and collaborations with designers such as Alessandro Mendini, Patricia Urquiola, Marcel Wanders and Ettore Sottsass, the mosaic stopped being considered a simple wall covering and became a creative language and design surface. After a career in the world of dance, Rossella joined the company and in 2012 took on the role of vice-president of the Fondazione Bisazza, a reality that has transformed the former industrial plant into a cultural institution dedicated to art, architecture and design. We met at the charity dinner she organised for the IEO-Monzino Foundation, of which I have the honour of being president. Rossella showed me an extraordinary collection of site-specific works made with mosaic tiles, signed by international artists and architects, and told me how the passion for art that has accompanied her since childhood has over time become a true cultural and philanthropic mission.
W WHEN AND HOW DID YOU START COLLECTING AND HOW DID YOUR PASSION FOR ART BEGIN?
My love for art - as well as for classical music, dance and opera - started when I was a child. My parents used to take me and my siblings to museums, exhibitions, concerts and dance performances. I vividly remember the moment when, at the age of eight, I entered the Musée du Louvre for the first time and was thunderstruck by the Nike of Samothrace. My first choice was ballet, which I practised with dedication until I made it a profession: for twelve years I danced in Carla Fracci's company. The bond with the arts has never been broken and today I continue to cultivate it - and share it - in my role as Vice President of the Foundation that bears our name.
HOW WAS THE COLLECTION OF THE BISAZZA FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED AND WHICH CRITERIA GUIDED THE CHOICE OF ARTISTS AND PROJECTS?
The Bisazza Foundation is a private non-profit organisation, open to the public, that was born from the desire to explore the expressive potential of mosaic in a contemporary key. It houses a permanent collection of works and site-specific installations, commissioned over time from leading international artists and designers. Each of them has been invited to freely interpret the mosaic according to their own creativity. The result is a series of unique works, surprising in their diversity and intensity, which tell of all the versatility of this material, capable of dialoguing with very different languages and sensibilities.
