Hong Kong businessman George Wong is holding a show in Beijing of works covering four phases of Italian art, Deng Zhangyu reports.

People visit the Challenging Beauty－Insights of Italian Contemporary Art exhibition in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily

An ongoing show of contemporary art in Beijing is a comprehensive showcase of Italian art from the 1960s. The exhibition, Challenging Beauty－Insights of Italian Contemporary Art, features representative works covering four phases of Italian art, including Arte Povera or "poor art" from late 1960s, trans-avant garde and the new art of 1980s Rome.

Totally, there are 47 pieces by 29 Italian artists on display, and the works belong to Hong Kong art collector George Wong.

Speaking of the display, Lorand Hegyi, the curator, says: "It showcases the development of Italian contemporary art after World War II. And it also bears the distinctive personality and preferences of the collector."

Wong, the president of the Hong Kong-based Parkview Green Group, has been collecting Italian art for the past few years, and has visited Italian museums and artist studios.

Photo provided to China Daily

Commenting on Wong's art holdings, Hegyi says: "Even for Italian collectors, it's not easy to amass such a comprehensive collection of Italian art."

The show is being held at Wong's mall in Beijing.

In 2014, Wong held a similar show dedicated to Italian art at the same venue.

But the current show, which is larger than the previous one, has many Arte Povera works by emerging artists done in the 1990s and the 2000s. Many of these works were bought by Wong earlier this year.

Arte Povera is an Italian art movement from the late 1960s and 1970s led by artists like Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mario Merz.

The artists used a wide range of materials to challenge the commercialized art system.

Penone's The Green of the Forest combines a tree trunk with a painting painted by plant pigments. Clothes by Pistoletto uses discarded clothes and mirrors.

Wong, who says he was amazed by Italian art when he started collecting it a few years ago, began with Chinese contemporary art 20 years ago.

But unlike many Chinese billionaires who love to offer big prices for well-known names in art, Wong says he bought only things that he liked.

"I used to think that Chinese contemporary art is amazing when I started collecting it. But when I went to Italy, the art there made a deep impression on me. The art there is deeply integrated with daily life," says Wong.

Gianni Dessi, whose sculptures were displayed in the 2014 show, and are also on show in the current exhibition, represents the '80s art.

His sculpture, Three For You, comprising human heads in bright colors, is very popular. A larger version of the piece, much taller than a person of average height, is displayed outside Wong's mall.

Dessi says the three heads represent his portraits. The colors, red, black and yellow, show his way of expressing his feelings about the world.

"It's a coincidence that there is a red head and another one with a ping pong ball. The elements of red color and ping pong ball are kind of Chinese style," says Dessi, who has visited China to display his works earlier.

Before his first visit to China in 2013, Dessi was interested in Chinese characters. For him, a Chinese character offers many image possibilities.

Among the artists whose works are on show is Marina Paris. A representative of emerging Italian art from the 2000s, Paris is showing her work here for the first time.

Her photos of an abandoned house in Rome are like oil paintings.

Paris says she is very interested in photographing abandoned houses. So, Wong invited her to visit China to take pictures after he acquired some of her work recently.

"Wong is the first from Asia to buy my works," says Paris, adding that she plans to visit China again to do work here because she was told about many abandoned houses here.

Hegyi, the show's curator, says Wong is obsessed with Italian art and he knows a lot about the history, architecture and culture of the country.

"This show embodies Wong's tastes, convictions and views of beauty," he says.

If you go

10 am-9 pm, until Oct 15. Parkview Green Museum, 9 Dongdaqiao Road, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5662-8568.

Source: China Daily