Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Italian publisher Rolando Pieraccini, who has lived for about thirty years in Finland, has become an Art Ambassador, or rather he has put into practice the important mystery of the intention of art as an extraordinary diplomatic medium. In his entire career as a publisher, in many ways Pieraccini promoted the cultural rapport between Finland and Italy, organising on one hand, numerous exhibits of Italian artists in Finland and viceversa. And what’s more, he contributed to the formation of relevant modern Finnish art collections in European museums including the Albertina in Vienna and Florence’s Uffizi Gallery.

Rolando Pieraccini moved for definite to Finland in 1975 and since then has worked as an art publisher and gallery owner. Two publishing houses founded by him published 30 years of art books as well as etchings and original lithographs. He curated his own monographs which are of particular importance, in which he dedicates the work to great contemporary Finnish artists. He also published a series of refined limited editions and signed works by writers from XX century, including Nobel Prize winners. Not long ago Ronaldo Pieraccini returned as a protagonist on the art scene. In fact he recently donated 550 works belonging essentially to his private collection to the biggest Finnish museum, the Ateneum Museum in Helsinki. The museum director noted that the works were a unique collection that comprised 20th century Italian masterpieces: ” The most important twentieth century works outside of Italy” underlining Heikki Malme, curator of paintings and designs in the Ateneum.

The collection is one of the greatest and most complete collections in the world of 20th century Italian art. It encompasses works by 40 artists. Certainly what’s more is that these are graphic works, watercolours and sketches, nevertheless of first class artists from Giorgio de Chirico to Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Alberto Burri, Felice Casorati, Afro Basaldella, Giorgio Morandi and many others. Rolando Pieraccini is one of the most famous Italian cultural artists abroad maybe more than in Italy. He began his collection at the start of the sixties when he had the chance to meet some famous etchers from the “Scuola di Urbino” : Leonardo Castellani, Walter Piacesi, Renato Bruscaglia and Arnaldo Battistoni, all very well represented in the collection. Pieraccini ha always only acquired works that he liked and preferred. Among his favourite artists are Campigli, Marini, Carrà and Castellani, as is evident from the revealing number of their works present in his collection. In 45 years of true research, little by little he has come to create a kind of “life collection”. Two years ago - according to the aforementioned story by Malme, the Italian gallery owner showed his intention to donate the collection to the Ateneum. The precious collection will be exhibited in autumn of 2009 by the same museum. On that occasion, a complete catalogue will be published in four languages with another 300 reproductions of works from this essential collection that will fill a huge space in the Finnish museum’s collections. In spite of the Folena draft (”A well known survey on the problems connected to the figurative art sector”, an initiative promoted by the commissioner of the Camera Pietro Folena) it is substantially impossible on the part of the patron to donate works to an Italian museum, due to Machiavellian laws and absurd bureaucracy which thus discourages the growth of our public collections. An opposing trend happens worldwide.