Art On Board: Costa Cruises Travelling Collection
Costa Cruises, the largest Italian travel group, presents Art on board, published by Skira, a book dealing with the fine art “traveling” collection housed on board the 14 ships comprising the Costa fleet.
Art on board is edited by Martina Corgnati, with a text by Ugo Volli. At the official presentation of the book, held on 23 February at “La Triennale di Milano,” there were speeches by Philippe Daverio, influential Italian art critic, Martina Corgnati, Ugo Volli and Costa Crociere S.p.A. Chairman & CEO Pier Luigi Foschi. Special Guests of the presentation also the Chairman of Skira, Massimo Vitta Zelman, e some of the most prestigious artists of the Costa collection: Mario Donizetti, Nathalie du Pasquier, Eloisa Gobbo, Cristina Iotti, Flavio Lucchini, Elisa Rossi, Nicola Salvatore, casagrande&recalcati, Aldo Spoldi, Carla Tolomeo.
The volume presents the artists who have contributed to the Italian Company’s monumental artistic project. For more than 60 years now, art has accompanied the evolution of interior design on Costa’s ships. Today on board the 14 ships in service there are about 4,200 original works and 50,000 copies; these veritable floating art galleries are “visited” by the many hundreds of thousands of passengers a year who travel on the Costa Cruises fleet.
All the artworks on board were specifically commissioned by the Italian cruise line. As Ugo Volli says in the book, “Costa Cruises is a great art collector. Certainly it is one of the major investors on the Italian art market.”
Since 2000 the interior layout of Costa’s new ships has been designed by architect Joseph Farcus, the “father” of “maximalism”. The maximalism style of Farcus, which is unique and completely individual, offers a wealth of visual stimuli. Like a skilled alchemist he makes use of the sophistication of technology to create seductive settings with different elements, a real universe of symbols, that envelop Guests. Each of these new generation Costa ships has her own distinctive central theme for the interior design: for example myths and legends, aristocratic villas and palaces, Europe and so on. The innovative design philosophy with its ground-breaking spatial concept is intended to catapult the Guest to a wonderful dreamlike world, where art and design become forms of language conveying sensations and experiences.
Art on board is divided into 6 parts: a chapter by Ugo Volli on “The Artworks Show”; a chapter by Martina Corgnati dealing with the Costa ship as a “world in itself”; an interview with Pier Luigi Foschi by Martina Corgnati; “Loves at first sight”, a selection of highlights from the Costa collection; “the collection as a project”, in which all the artists whose works are displayed on board the Costa Cruises fleet are presented; and a final section about the Company’s fleet.
The artists showcased in the book and on board comprise both established international painters and sculptors as well as emerging young talent: Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fernando Botero, Mario Donizetti, Nathalie du Pasquier, Cristina Iotti, Flavio Lucchini, Yoshin Ogata, Sophia Vari, Darya von Berner, Luisa Valentini, Elisa Rossi, Eloisa Gobbo, Arman, Leonida de Filippi, Wal, Nicola Salavatore, Simona Uberto, casagrande&recalcati, Lucio Del Pezzo, Omar Galliani, Milo Manara, Carlo Mattioli, Susumu Shingu, Aldo Spoldi, Tullio Pericoli and Emilio Tadini.
