CASA MORRA – Archivio d’Arte Contemporanea Il Gioco dell’Oca – 100 anni di mostre

Casa Morra is the museum space area created by Giuseppe Morra in Palazzo Cassano Ayerbo D’Aragona in Naples, a 4,200-square-metre complex that will gradually be rennovated to house the extensive Morra collection comprising over 2,000 works presented by theme and focusing on individual artists. It will be a journey through the history of contemporary art and fundamental movements such as Gutai, Happening, Fluxus, Viennese Actionism, Living Theatre, and Visual Poetry up to the most advanced research in Italy and abroad. Thus continues the great adventure of this Neapolitan patron of the arts who will house his extensive collection here, the result of over forty years of activity on the international art scene.

From the start, Casa Morra was never meant to be a static exhibition space but was to become an archive of contemporary art, a place of dynamism encouraging reflection and research on society and its development. It is to be a “house of ideas” where the past merges with the present and future, defying time with a programme that has been mapped out until 2116. Beppe Morra has, in fact, planned exhibitions for the next 100 years, using a “snakes and ladders” system of references, cross-overs and turnings back. The exhibition cycles are governed by the alchemy of the numbers 3 and 7 to coincide with the number of artists on show or the number of works and exhibition sequences on show.

The Morra collection comprises works by: Marina Abramović, Nanni Balestrini, Julian Beck, George Brecht, John Cage, Ugo Carrega, LUCA/Luigi Castellano, Henri Chopin, Giuseppe Desiato, Marcel Duchamp, Maurizio Elettrico, Heinz Gappmayr, Al Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Urs Lüthi, Stelio Maria Martini, Charlotte Moorman, Eugenio Miccini, Hermann Nitsch, Nam June Paik, Giulio Paolini, Luca Maria Patella, Lamberto Pignotti, Vettor Pisani, Paul Renner, Gerhard Rühm, Shozo Shimamoto, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Daniel Spoerri, Arrigo Lora Totino, Bob Watts, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Dieter Roth, Oswald Wiener, Giuseppe Zevola, and many others from the past and future. Almost all of them have been companions to Giuseppe Morra in his singular artistic adventure, which he has always experienced with curiosity, participation, and a project in mind, this time reaching beyond the limits of his own lifetime.

Casa Morra thus adds a new piece to the mosaic that is the great Il Quartiere dell’arte project, aiming to give new life to an entire neighbourhood bordering Naples’ old city centre, which already houses the Museo Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee Hermann Nitsch set up by Casa Morra in 2008.