The Arazzeria

Abandoned Abandoned and largely left to ruin, the Carthusian Monastery was salvaged between 1962 and 1965, to host the workshop of Arazzeria Scassa, dedicated to high-warp weaving of contemporary tapestries, as one of the few still operating in Italy to date. Arazzeria Scassa wove hundreds of tapestries up until the passing of its founder, Ugo Scassa, on 22nd January 2017. Today, it continues its activity under the guidance of Massimo Bilotta, nephew of Ugo Scassa and Sole Administrator. Amongst the artists to have created sketches we find the great names of Italian art including Carla Accardi, Fabrizio Clerici, Michelangelo Conte, Giorgio de Chirico, Piero Dorazio, Roberto Ercolini, Mario Giansone, Edoardo Giordano, Ezio Gribaudo, Costantino Guenzi, Beatrice Lazzari, Luigi Montanarini, Gastone Novelli, Giovanni Omiccioli, Achille Pace, Giuseppe Vittorio Parisi, Achille Perilli, Luigi Piciotti, Giuseppe Picone, Mimmo Rotella, Pietro Sadun, Antonio Sanfilippo, Antonio Scordia, Federico Spoltore, Emilio Tadini, Alessandro Trotti, Emilio Vedova, Antonino Virduzzo and Tono Zancanaro, as well as a large group of great international artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró and the architect Renzo Piano. These names clearly show the aesthetic wants to have engaged the technical resources of Arazzeria Scassa throughout its half-century in operation.

Ugo Scassa’s initial idea was to combine avant-garde art with one of the oldest applied arts – tapestry weaving. After more than sixty years in the role of tapestry-maker, Ugo’s great success can be documented by his relationships with artists such as Corrado Cagli and Felice Casorati, Giorgio de Chirico and Renato Guttuso, Umberto Mastroianni and Mirko Basaldella, Luigi Spazzapan and Emilio Vedova. One of the most intense and interesting adventures of his artistic career was the high-warp translation of the designs of architect Renzo Piano. To this important artistic body, we must add an entire series of tapestries made in homage to the most beloved artists, including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse and Max Ernst.

Ugo’s wife Katia Alcaro and her sister Franca Alcaro – Massimo's mother – conducted the weaving work each and every day for decades, their expert hands and eyes realising many of the Scassa tapestries. Massimo breathed in the atmosphere of the tapestry atelier since childhood. He eventually embarked on a career in architecture. Yet, after Uncle Ugo’s passing, Massimo Bilotta chose to enhance the family treasure, bringing it to the future with great humility and passion, artistic sensitivity and a gaze firmly set on the future. His vision rests on certain fundamental aspects: the creation of exhibition events where everyone may admire the Scassa tapestries directly in all their splendid details, along with training – an indispensable factor in also transferring knowledge to new weavers, thanks in part to the collaboration with the Academies of Art. The foundation of a cultural hub, as a project to relaunch the history of tapestry, came from the desire to bring as many people as possible closer to the art and its history. In addition to these aspects came the production of new tapestries commissioned by individuals and artists, to expand the heritage of the works created by the Arazzeria Scassa.

This ambitious project was aimed at developing a more prosperous and liberal art economy.

Yet, after Uncle Ugo’s passing, Massimo Bilotta chose to enhance the family treasure, bringing it to the future with great humility and passion, artistic sensitivity and a gaze firmly set on the future. His vision rests on certain fundamental aspects: the creation of exhibition events where everyone may admire the Scassa tapestries directly in all their splendid details, along with training – an indispensable factor in also transferring knowledge to new weavers, thanks in part to the collaboration with the Academies of Art. The foundation of a cultural hub, as a project to relaunch the history of tapestry, came from the desire to bring as many people as possible closer to the art and its history. In addition to these aspects came the production of new tapestries commissioned by individuals and artists, to expand the heritage of the works created by the Arazzeria Scassa.

With the project to create the tapestries for the Italian cruise liner began a fruitful collaboration with Corrado Cagli, which continued with resounding success until the Maestro’s passing in 1976, with projects including the orders for new tapestries for the Michelangelo and Raphael ships.

Arazzeria Scassa represented Italy at the 1963 Exposition International de Tapisserie Contemporaine, held at the Château de Culan in France, in a competition against seven other nations including France and Belgium, with just three high-warp tapestries on cartoons by Cagli and Basaldella.

In a special correspondence from Paris, the New York Herald Tribune on 26th wrote: Italy Outstanding - Eight countries are represented. Italy has but three tapestries in the show, but in a country-by-country evaluation, they are the best, affirming that the three Italian tapestries proved to be the finest in the exhibition and the only works truly worthy of competing with those of Henri Matisse and Jean Lurçat.

That same year, the tapestry I Gemini – woven at the Asti atelier on a cartoon by Francesco Muzzi and exhibited at the Italian Pavilion of the III Biennale in Paris – attracted the attention of Minister André Malraux and was subsequently purchased by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs for the Collections of the French State.

Throughout this period, tapestries on cartoons by Cagli, Renato Guttuso and Mirko Basaldella were displayed in the exhibition of Herbst Salon in Munich.

Throughout the years, the works of Arazzeria Scassa have been presented at major international exhibitions, including in Athens, Paris and Gothenburg, at the itinerant exhibition in American museums organised by the MoMA in New York and at the exhibition The Italian Art of Living, held in 1992 on Park Avenue. Thanks to these prestigious achievements, the commissions of institutions and individuals multiplied, engaging Arazzeria Scassa in important works also from a perspective closely linked to the size of the work. By way of example are the two tapestries: Europe after the Rain, a work taken from the production of the artist Max Ernst and exhibited at Le Muse Inquietanti (The Disquieting Muses), held at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Turin in 1967, measuring 204 x 478 cm, along with Apollo and Daphne by Cagli, now owned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti and hailing from the Angelo Rizzoli Collection in Milan, measuring 290 cm x 530 cm. As masterpieces of art with an extraordinary effect, the dimensions allow a complete immersion in the heart of the weft.

Other works of importance due to the number and destination include Risen Christ and Saint George by Corrado Cagli, becoming part of the endowment of the Pontifical Galleries in the Vatican, and Daffodil by Corrado Cagli, destined for the Sala della Presidenza in the Senate of the Italian Republic.

Corrado Cagli’s L’enigma di Febo is exhibited in the atrium of the RAI Headquarters in Turin, whilst the tapestry Eurinome, creased based on the work of Umberto Mastroianni, was woven for the hall of the Rome Court of Appeal. Gli Emigranti by Mirko Basaldella belongs to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York. A series of tapestries on cartoons by Marcello Avenali was woven for the Banco di Santo Spirito in Rome, now the Banca di Roma.

Three tapestries, two on sketches by Luigi Spazzapan and one by Felice Casorati, are part of the Salone dei Trecento of the San Paolo Banking Institute in Turin. A series of four tapestries on cartoons by Corrado Cagli, Renato Guttuso, Mirko Basaldella and Mario Sironi along with two on cartoons by Francesco Muzzi have been woven for the halls of the Opera Nazionale Pensionati d’Italia, currently owned by the municipalities of Meldola (Forlì) and Turin. A tapestry on a cartoon by Luigi Spazzapan was woven for the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts and Agriculture of Asti. Another work was based on a cartoon by Felice Casorati for the Banca Cassa di Risparmio di Asti.

Arazzeria Scassa also wove the standards of the Lombardy and Piedmont Regions, the Province of Asti, and the cities of Asti and Taormina.