ART AND INDUSTRY. A Tribute to Marco Rivetti (1943–96)

20 years after his death, we celebrate Marco Rivetti, the visionary businessman whose textile company GFT shifted high fashion after World War II from an elite universe of unique pieces of clothing to the serial production of pret-à-porter wear for designers such as Armani, Ungaro, Dior, Valentino and Trussardi. In the 1980s, the GFT included 35 subsidiaries, 18 factories, 8000 employees and produced 8 billion garments with outlets in 70 countries. He also loved art and helped artists produce it; he collected it and donated it in order to forge the first Italian Contemporary Art Museum, ours. He was the third Chairman of the Museum from 1988 to 1993. Some of the people he worked with were: Giovanni Anselmo, Germano Celant, Mario Merz, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Frank Gehry, Ida Gianelli; Arata Isozaki, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Haim Steinbach, Luca Ronconi and Gilberto Zorio.

Today, Castello di Rivoli director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev states, “I meet a lot of people. I really wish I had met Marco Rivetti, but his spirit lives on in this splendid 18th century castle-turned-museum. Rivetti anticipated aspects of the current blurred boundaries between art and industry and yet his vision seems the opposite of what surrounds us in today’s world of creative industries too often populated by those in search of mere status or financial gain.”

Indeed, in 1988, Marco Rivetti stated, “Our focus on the expressive research of contemporary art does not represent for the GFT simply a form of sponsorship or cultural patronage. Instead, it is an integral part of a constant effort to interact with contemporary taste and its evolution, from which innovation and industrial creativity must draw motivation.”

For a program please visit www.castellodirivoli.org.

Supported by Fondazione Marco Rivetti