Twenty years of Max Mara Art Prize for Women on show in Florence

Twenty years ago, Max Mara Fashion Group launched with the London Whitechapel Art Gallery a biennial visual arts prize, aimed at enhancing female innovation and creativity and targeting emerging female artists based in the UK. In 2007, the Collezione Maramotti of Reggio Emilia, a precious collection of artworks from the post-war period to the present day, joined the Max Mara Art Prize for Women as a third partner. That operation has not stopped since then: the artists participating in the prize present a project, assessed by a jury formed by the Whitechapel Gallery and composed of women protagonists of the British art scene; the winner obtains a six-month artist residency in Italy and assistance for the production of her work provided by the Collezione Maramotti (in whose catalogue the works of art remain), from the research of materials to production techniques, from institutional contacts to craftsmanship.

Now the works of the winners - nine in all, given the Covid break - are on display in Florence, in the spaces of the Strozzina Gallery in Palazzo Strozzi, in the exhibition 'Time for Women! Empowering Visions in 20 Years of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women' organised by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Collezione Maramotti to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the prize. "For the first time, the works are all together," explains Sara Piccinini, director of the Collezione Maramotti, "and the non-stereotyped vision of the feminine, the relationship with nature, the attention to motherhood, vulnerability and poverty that the artists have expressed is even more evident.

Emerging at the time of their participation in the award, some of the artists over the years have established themselves on the international art scene. The works in the exhibition - videos, installations, sculptures, wall works - are by Margaret Salmon, Hannah Rickards, Andrea Buettner, Laure Prouvost, Corin Sworn, Emma Hart, Helen Cammock, Emma Talbot and Dominique White. Each artist has chosen the Italian city (or cities) in which to live, work and be inspired, from Faenza to make ceramic lamps to Reggio Emilia for jacquard looms to the waters of the Mediterranean to oxidise an iron sculpture. "Each of them, starting from reflections on themes such as identity, memory, the body, society and politics," explain the promoters, "has focused on particular aspects linked to research and experience in our country: from the commedia dell'arte to maternity, from the contemporary idea of the grand tour to the high craftsmanship excellence, from mythology to monastic communities, from the natural landscape to history, and the collection of forgotten voices and narratives from antiquity to the present day. Next year, in 2026, the new edition of the award will start: the declination of female art does not stop.