Contemporary art

The contemporary art collection at GAM is one of the vastest and most important in Italy. The initial core came from the city’s collection, with works by artists who took part in the Arte Povera movement, understood in its early, more inclusive formation, and by the new avant-garde, starting with Analytical Painting, from the 1960s and 1970s. This was later enriched with the prestigious collection of the Experimental Museum established by Eugenio Battisti in 1963 and donated to GAM in 1966, and with works from the Margherita Stein collection.
Subsequent movements, between the 1970s and 1980s, are represented by Luigi Ontani, Salvo, Nicola De Maria, and, internationally, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz.
Starting in 1999 the collection grew thanks to artist films and videos, the first public collection of its kind in Italy and the most important even today, as well as a collection of photographs that includes the best in Italian photography after World War II.
A vital contribution to the growth of the contemporary art collection was made by a series of solo exhibitions dedicated to Italian and international mid-career artists starting in 2000, with acquisitions of works by Eva Marisaldi, Mario Airò, Massimo Bartolini, Tobias Rehberger, Chen Zhen, Nari Ward, and Jessica Stockholder.
In more recent years, acquisitions have continued with the same principle that aims to make them a mnemonic trace or impulse for the Museum’s exhibitions, thus allowing a constant recognition of the practice of some of the most interesting artists from recent decades up to today: from Diego Perrone to Chiara Camoni, Luca Bertolo to Merlin James. Moreover, since 2020, GAM is among the winners of several competitions issued by the Ministry of Culture that has allowed for works by artists like Flavio Favelli and Michele Tocca to be commissioned or acquired.