A collection is not simply an assemblage of works;

it proposes experiences to be lived and shared.

Collecting for me is not just about owning,

it is a way of being, a philosophical attitude concerning

my search for wholeness that I would like to share.

Giuseppe Panza di Biumo

On the outskirts of Bergamo, where Val Cavallina opens up east to the city between Val Seriana and Lake Iseo, lies Trescore Balneario. A place imbued with history, with its Roman baths and Lorenzo Lotto's 1524 frescoes preserved in the Suardi Oratory, dedicated to Santa Barbara and Santa Brigida. A place, indeed "the" place of Enzo Nembrini and his wife Francesca, of their childhood and their affections. In fact, it is here that they were both born and raised, and it is here that, after their studies and important professional experiences abroad, they decided a few years ago to return, establishing there their residence and company headquarters. The place of work, then, of professional activities, of relationships with people, objects and ideas, where everything takes shape. But even before and above all, the family home, an old spinning mill from the late 19th century inside the Castello dei Lanzi, which now comes back to life thanks to a major renovation by the Arcoquattro architecture studio in Milan.

Curious and always a lover of research and study of materials, but also of architecture, art and design, when Enzo Nembrini, entrepreneur, together with his wife Francesca, supporter and ally, chose this as their place, he immediately thought of a welcoming, "happy" space,

in which the arts could coexist and dialogue. And so it did. Here, in fact, the architecture blends with the landscape; the recovery of the external walls and the enhancement of the original openings was the starting point of a major restoration and redevelopment aimed at the residential reuse of the building, enhancing its constituent elements: the green of nature, water and marble stone. An environment where even the works of art, which Enzo began collecting a few years ago, live in constant dialogue. The generosity of the collector has led him to the decision, today, not to relegate the collection to the private dimension of the everyday family, but also to share it with friends, collaborators and a wider public. Enzo seems to have grasped the potential inherent in the "display value" of the work of art, with which the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin understood, in his time, the pivotal principle of modern and contemporary sensibility toward beauty in the age of technical reproducibility of art.

This historical shift forever changed the function and manner in which a work is enjoyed. By exponentially increasing its responibility, it was in fact freed from its "auratic" dimension, which by binding it to the cult and the divine had elevated it morally, but distanced it from the viewer. The work of art in the new panorama becomes immediately available for collective and extended enjoyment, approaching the viewer to establish an ideal dialogue with him and redefining his sensory and aesthetic experience. Casa Nembrini then appears to us as an imaginative and mental space, even before it is physical and real, in which artworks, building materials, design objects and living spaces - indoor and outdoor - interpenetrate, enriching each other.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL COLLECTION CATALOG HERE