For a long time the art treasures of Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo were open to only a few privileged individuals. However, since the famous Italian collector and lawyer with a doctor’s degree bequeathed his property in Varese, north of Milan to the National Trust for Italy (FAI) in 1996 the former family villa with service buildings is now open to the public. Nothing on the estate has been removed to a museum. The cultivated lifestyle of the family has been preserved in the 18t^h century residence.

The beautiful old furnishings still decorate the salons, family photos are strung up in the studio, and before the modern works of art you sense the enthusiasm with which Giovanna and Giuseppe Panza enriched traditional values with the beauty of modernity. Along with furniture from the era of the previous owner, Duke Litta Visconti Arese and his son Antonio, who held court here in the 19^th century, and the antiquities from the Panza family estate abstract American paintings from the 80s and 90s are grouped in the main floor of the villa.

With 5,000 square metres of exhibition space the museum seems like a School for Seeing, without vain name-dropping, without instructions: On a tour through the house the audio guide takes over the role of the host, calling attention to details, directing your view across the large park to nearby Sacro Monte with its pilgrimage chapels and to the range of the Alp foothills, inspiring the visitor to meditate on considerations of present-day art.

An ornamental wooden frame from a church adorns the entrance to the exhibition halls; between eye-level candelabras hang the powerful monochromes from Californian Phil Sims, coloured light impressions of the sky, sundown or a meadow at first green. Below the ceiling paintings of the salon with symbols of the four seasons the oil paintings from New York painter Ruth Ann Freudenthal, whose colour compositions are built upon many fine layers, contrast with pre-Columbian and African sculptures.

In the former dining room cult heads from the frontier area between Cameroon and Nigeria rest on an Umbrian sacristy credenza. Above this glisten the pictures from the California painter, David Simpson, whose metallic pigments reflect the light. The intimate study, where Count Panza once read art books throughout the evening, is dominated by a picture from the painter Max Cole, whose stripes consist of thousands of small lines.

A mixture of emotions is bestowed by tours through the former service wing to the stables and coach houses, where colour and artificial light change the empty halls with luminous terracotta tiles and deceive the senses. Neon reliefs and neon lamps all around in blood red, ultraviolet, green, baby blue, pink and yellow illuminate devout groups of visitors. One press on the switch and yellowish green strips of light shoot through a 28-meter long hallway that American minimalist artist Dan Flavin transformed into his magical “Varese Corridor” in 1976.

Another empty room again – a sudden shiver in the draught streaming through the broad façade opening. The landscape outside becomes a picture in the “Varese Window Room”, that Californian Robert Irwin created here in 1973 by commission from Panza. Framed in white by the walls, it changes to the rhythm of the day and seasons.

Even the view of the clouds, into the endlessness of the sky offered by the “Skyspace” by James Turrell thanks to a hydraulically opening ceiling, shows the artistic powers of nature. Turrell takes the abilities of good art beyond fashion for the world to see, which is what Panza puts his money on up to today. “Beauty”, explains the passionate collector “has no limits”. It brings us into contact with a reality that is above all things.”

Information

Villa e Collezione Panza, Piazza Litta, 1, I-21100 Varese, Tel. 00 39/03 32/28 39 60, Fax 983 15.

Villa Panza (with museum shop and café) is open from Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Admission: 8 euros, children 3 euros.

Directions: A8 Milan-Varese motorway to Varese “centro”. Then follow the signs for the Villa.

Further information is available on the internet at www.fondoambiente.it/en/beni/villa-panza-collection-fai-properties.asp