info taken from www.galleriaspazzapan.it

Inaugurated on January 15, 1977, in the historic Palazzo Torriani, the seat of the Municipality of Gradisca d'Isonzo, the Luigi Spazzapan Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art was preceded by more than a decade of intense exhibition activity conducted under the guidance of Bruno Patuna in the halls of the Enoteca Serenissima, in the civic hall Bergamas, and in the Dante Alighieri school.

An art critic and exhibition organizer, after living for a long time in Rome, in 1965 Patuna returned to Gradisca to lead the newly established Tourism and Accommodation Agency. In 1966, he founded the "Serenissima" Gallery in the 15th-century premises of the Regional Enoteca, inaugurating it with an exhibition of Carlo Carrà's graphics: it was the beginning of a particularly successful period, with nearly a hundred exhibitions that made the Enoteca of Gradisca one of the most frequented places by art enthusiasts not only in the region.

The most important event took place in 1970, when the first major exhibition of Luigi Spazzapan's work was organized, curated by Giuseppe Marchiori, the art critic and writer who over the years had become a regular visitor to Gradisca.

The most significant works of the exhibition came from the collection of Eugenio Giletti, a friend of the painter who supported him during the difficult early years in Piedmont by regularly purchasing his paintings and introducing him to the cultural world of Turin to promote his success.

The success of the event suggested to the Tourism and Accommodation Agency of Gradisca to promote the establishment of a permanent gallery dedicated to the artist and located in the recently restored 17th-century Palazzo Torriani: the realization of the project was significantly aided by Giletti, who supported the initiative by providing the museum with eighty-seven works from his collection.

Thus, in 1977, Bruno Patuna's dream was realized: to transform a decade of exhibition experience into a permanent institution for contemporary art, a broad cultural project that marked the happy meeting of collectors, critics, artists, and institutional representatives. But the true strength of the initiative lay in the desire to unite a now "historic" figure like Spazzapan with the contemporary art of Friuli Venezia Giulia, which was intended to be closely followed with a view to forming an archive of authors that could, for the first time, play a bridging role between two realities, the Friulian and the Julian, which until then had been substantially divided.

In 2010, after a significant renovation of the exhibition spaces, the Gallery inaugurated a management model that involves the unusual and effective synergy of three entities - the Province of Gorizia, the Municipality of Gradisca d'Isonzo, and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia. The support of an independent scientific committee has contributed over the years to the success of what has become one of the main centers for the production and enhancement of contemporary culture, a place where scientific research and innovation are perfectly balanced.

In 2013, after exhibitions that explored art through painting and sculpture, the Gallery embarked on a new line of research with an exhibition dedicated to Werther Toffoloni, a designer from Cormons who, through the exemplary fusion of aesthetics and design, is one of the protagonists of contemporary industrial design.