Max Mara’s Art Prize for Women Celebrates 20th Year with Powerful Exhibition

Max Mara was established in 1951, in the town of Reggio Emilia, by Achille Maramotti, who wanted to bring American industrialization to garment production in Italy, and create chic clothing for middle-class women. “He was thinking, for example, about the wives of doctors, who were beginning to have interesting lives outside the home, and having more agency within it,” says Piccini. “Max Mara has always been on the side of women.” (Maramotti was also a great art collector and the collection is open to the public and housed in the building which was the original Max Mara factory.)

The chosen artists are offered a six-month residency anywhere in Italy and the funds to cover that, as well as support by specialists in artistic institutions across the country. Once their project is complete, it is shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London—who co-partners the scheme—and acquired by the Maramotti Collection. “As a prize, it is quite special, in that it fulfills every possibility,” says Natasha Plowright of the Whitechapel Gallery. “It gives the artist time and money, and the opportunity to do something really ambitious, as well as making sure it will expose their work on a major stage.”

Ambition is certainly on show in the Palazzo Strozzi. Laure Provost’s luscious, fast-cut color film is a love letter to Italy, its sensuality and its history of art. She recreates art historical tropes, like the female nude, in contemporary form with her protagonists lounging on river banks by sparkling waterfalls, while stilllifes are brought alive here, with bright birds flitting in and out of branches and ripe fruits being squeezed in human hands. It’s like a Bernardo Bertolucci summer love affair.

New York-raised Margaret Salmon the first recipient of the prize, who worked on her project from 2005-2007, shows her love of Italian cinema in a 3-screen black and white film that owes a debt to the work of Roberto Rossellini, famous for gritty postwar movies like Rome Open City. “My daughter was 6 months old when I was told I had won,” says Camron, “and her birth had connected me much more strongly to women’s experience, especially as she came to Italy with me.” Camron’s actors perform daily domestic tasks—cleaning, cooking, childcare—but are filmed in artful 16mm to the soundtrack of traditional Tuscan song. Her daughter is now 21, and a musician living in LA. “And she loves fashion,” says Camron. “I think this experience grounded her in it from the start.”

The Canadian Corin Sworn (2013-2015) focused on the Commedia dell’Arte—colorful theater performed by traveling players in 16^th Century Italy. “Cities were locked at night, but these travelers were allowed to roam, and were considered dangerous and exotic in equal measure,” says Iwona Blazwick, the director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, who devised the prize in 2005 with the Max Mara CEO, Luigi Maramotti. “They were also, in their plays, able to speak truth to power.” Sworn has made a panoply of props to evoke their presence, including costumes that she created in the design ateliers at Max Mara.

While Andrea Büttner went to the monastic communities of Assisi and northern Italy for inspiration, Emma Talbot headed to Rome where she was inspired by Gustav Klimt’s “The Three Ages of Woman” which hangs in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. In Talbot’s hands, the elder woman becomes a fierce female warrior in sculptural form. “She’s a person with experience and knowledge, and a different way to be powerful,” says Talbot. “My message is that we all have the ability to create the future we want.”

With the Tracey Emin exhibition “Sex and Solitude” bringing in crowds since it opened at Palazzo Strozzi in March, and a new installation by emerging Italian artist Giula Cenci coming to the project space in late May, the banner “Time for Women!” that welcomes visitors certainly seems appropriate. “I am very proud that we are covering all generations of women artist this year,” says the institution’s director Arturo Galansino. “But the Max Mara Prize especially celebrates the empowerment of women, and the contemporary creativity that is alive in Italy today.” It’s a killer combination.

Max Mara Prize for Women Artists until 31 August 2025