Twenty boxes with more than 500 prints, drawings and collages by sculptor Federico Carasso were donated to the museum ten years after his solo exhibition in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Boijmans thus owns the largest collection of works on paper by this artist.
The descendants of the Italian-Dutch artist Federico (Fred) Carasso (1899-1969) decided in 2020 to donate a large part of his collection – 514 works of art on paper – to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The donation from the Federico Antonio Carasso Foundation is now final. In 2011, the Rotterdam art museum already organized an exhibition in the Print Room about the drawings by Carasso that are hardly known to the public. The drawings exhibited during Fred Carasso – Works on Paper by a Sculptor are part of the donation and are in line with the collections of Pop Art Surrealism and Sculpture that the museum owns. Since the exhibition, the works have been on long-term loan to the museum.
Deirdre Carasso, chairman of the Federico Carasso foundation said, “The family is very proud and grateful that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen wants to preserve a representative part of Fred Carasso’s drawings. His drawings reflect his artistic development and ideas and now they remain accessible to each other forever and to the public. “
The Carasso collection
In the 1980s, twenty boxes containing the most representative works on paper were put together by Dedalo Carasso, the artist’s son, also a cultural historian and curator. The magazines offer numerous starting points to put Carasso’s life and work in perspective. In addition, the collection establishes connections between his visual work and that of other artists whose work the museum has collected, including James Ensor and Kristians Tonny. In addition to Cobra-like drawings, figure studies and Jeu de massacre – a series of socially critical prints – the donation includes dozens of collages based on cut-out magazine illustrations. The earliest examples show his interest in surrealism, while later ones reflect his knowledge of pop art.
