Egidio Marzona (1944-2026) has passed away.
On March 15, 2026, the Italian art collector and patron Egidio Marzona (born in Bielefeld in 1944) died in Berlin after a serious illness, surrounded by his family and friends.
For over 50 years, Egidio Marzona amassed one of the most extensive collections of 20th-century art, which is now housed in the Archive of the Avant-Gardes in Dresden and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin.
Even at a young age, he acquired his first works of contemporary art and worked as a gallery owner in Bielefeld and Düsseldorf. From the 1970s onward, as publisher of his Edition Marzona, he released publications on the topics of Bauhaus, photography, typography, and architecture. He increasingly devoted himself entirely to building and expanding his art collection, which initially focused on the then-current art movements of Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, Land Art, and Arte Povera.
He gradually broadened his collection to encompass the entire 20th century and, in parallel, amassed an extensive archive of letters, photographs, ephemera, journals, and books, as his interest extended not only to the artworks themselves but also to the process of their creation.
Between 2002 and 2014, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation acquired his collection of more than 600 artworks and 40,000 archival items related to Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, and Arte Povera (partly through purchase, partly through donation). It is currently housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), and the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) in Berlin, and is slated to become part of the forthcoming Berlin Modern complex.
In 2014, Marzona was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin.
In 2016, he donated his archive on the avant-garde of the 20th century and its associated collection to the Free State of Saxony. For this donation, comprising 1.5 million objects, the Free State commissioned the Spanish-German architectural firm Nieto Sobejano to renovate the so-called Blockhaus on the Elbe River in Dresden. In 2024, the Archive of the Avant-Garde (ADA) opened as part of the Dresden State Art Collections and was made accessible to the public (archiv-der-avantgarden.skd.museum). It sees itself as both a research institute and a museum, encompassing works of all genres from the geometric Art Nouveau period to postmodernism, as well as works from the fields of literature, politics, philosophy, film, dance, and theater. In 2024—the year of its opening—the ADA was chosen as Museum of the Year by the German section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
For Marzona, it was essential to make his collections available to the public—in the spirit of art as a common good.
Marzona was, among other things, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art/PS1 in New York and one of the co-initiators of Kunst-Werke Berlin.
In 2018, the Marzona Foundation New Saalecker Workshops, based in Naumburg (Saale), was established. The Design Academie Saaleck (dieDAS), established by the foundation, is dedicated to nurturing innovative designers, craftspeople, architects, and artists through its fellowship program and is supported by the German federal government and the state of Saxony-Anhalt (https://www.die-das.de). The Academie is set within the Saalecker Workshops, built by Paul Schultze-Naumburg, which are currently being renovated according to a plan by Danish architect Dorte Mandrup and will house dieDAS's internationally oriented fellowship programs in the future.
In Villa di Verzegnis in Friuli, the home of Marzona’s paternal family, the collector established a sculpture park in 1989 featuring works by artists including Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, Sol LeWitt, and Carl Andre.
Marzona is survived by his partner, a daughter, and a granddaughter. His son, Daniel Marzona, passed away in 2024.
Egidio Marzona will be sorely missed by all who knew him, and the dieDAS community will forever be grateful for his vision, generosity, and leadership.
