The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbeitz and its museums mourn the loss of Egidio Marzona

Press release from 03/16/2026

On 15 March 2026, the Italian art collector and patron Egidio Marzona (born 1944 in Bielefeld) passed away in Berlin surrounded by his family and friends.

This was announced by his family today. Egidio Marzona amassed one of the most extensive collections of 20th century art over more than 50 years, which is now housed in the Archive of the Avant-Garde in Dresden and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin.

Marion Ackermann, President of the SPK and former Director General of the Dresden State Art Collections, explains: "Egidio Marzona dedicated his life to art. He was a passionate and tireless collector of the avant-gardes of the 20th century, seeking to capture the artistic and intellectual movements of an entire century. His collection is not limited to works of art, but extends to evidence of the entire process of artistic creation. Berlin and Dresden owe him a great deal, as he gradually handed over his collections to the respective museums, where they act like a battery that constantly provides new narratives and contexts."

Egidio Marzona acquired his first works of contemporary art at a young age and worked as a gallery owner in Bielefeld and Düsseldorf. From the 1970s onwards, he published books on Bauhaus, photography, typography and architecture as the publisher of his Edition Marzona. He increasingly devoted himself entirely to building up and expanding his art collection, which initially focussed on the then current art movements of Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, Land Art and Arte Povera. He gradually expanded his collection to include the entire 20th century and, at the same time, compiled an extensive archive of letters, photographs, ephemera, magazines and books, as his interest was not only in the artworks themselves, but also in the process of their creation.

Between 2002 and 2014, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation took over his collection of more than 600 works of art and 40,000 archival documents on Minimal Art, Conceptual Art and Arte Povera (partly as a purchase, partly as a donation). It is currently housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett and the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin and is to become part of berlin modern, which is currently under construction. In 2025, Egidio Marzona donated 22 rare books of conceptual art from the 1960s designed by artists to the SPK Art Library.

For Marzona, it was fundamental to make his collections available to the public - in the spirit of art as a common good. From 1989, the collector set up a sculpture park in Villa di Verzegnis in Friuli, where his paternal family comes from, with works by Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre, among others. Among other things, he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art/PS1 in New York and was one of the co-founders of Kunst-Werke Berlin. In 2014, Marzona was honoured with the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin.

In 2016, Marzona donated his archive on the avant-gardes of the 20th century and the associated collection to the Free State of Saxony. In 2024, the Archive of the Avant-Garde (ADA) was opened as part of the Dresden State Art Collections and made accessible to the public.

In 2018, the Marzona Foundation Neue Saalecker Werkstätten, based in Naumburg (Saale), was established. The Design Akademie Saaleck (dieDAS) established by the foundation is dedicated to promoting innovative designers, craftspeople, architects and artists by awarding scholarships and is supported by the federal government and the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Egidio Marzona is survived by his partner, a daughter and a granddaughter. His son Daniel Marzona died in 2024.