The Centre was born with the attempt to preserve, expose, increase and promote the civic collections acquired with the "Golfo della Spezia" painting prize between 1949 and 1965 which have been expanded thanks to the generous donations from the Cozzani and Battolini collections.

Besides such mission, CAMeC intends to receive, signal and study the expressions of the most relevant contemporary artists with particular focus on the younger generations.

The Art Direction is planning to create exhibitions of qualified critical and high cultural value, such as historical acknowledgement dedicated to authors and movements of the XXth century.

The National “Golfo della Spezia” Prize of painting dates back to the summer of 1933. The invention and organization of this exhibition are due to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Fillia: a lively reunion of several second-generation Futurist artists and others gave life to that memorable summer and initiated the interest of La Spezia for contemporary art. The resumption of the event took place in 1949 and lasted up to 1965: until then it kept the original title, as a way to look back on its historical origins; it was then resumed in the year 2000 keeping a biennial cadence.
Its peculiar prize-acquisition formula has given the town about 300 works constituting the first group of the permanent exhibition housed by CAMeC. Due to its authoritative principles of selection, the Prize has documented and collected the complex events and the most significant results of Italian art and, since the year 2000, of international production.

Cozzani collection

The collection donated to the Municipality of La Spezia by Giorgio and Ilda Cozzani in 1998 features about 1200 works. Among them are about 80 sculptures and about 300 drawings and paintings, in addition to an imposing collection of graphic arts which documents the Twentieth Century, moving freely in every direction.

Among the numerous thematic nuclei, collected with great competence and far-sightedness, we should underline Expressionism, from the xylographies of the beginnings to the Neue Wilden, Bauhaus, Surrealism, the Figurativism of the second postwar period, the “Gruppo degli Otto” (Group of Eight), a relevant Non-representational presence, the Cobra group, and the most probably unique presence in Italy of Spur. Important examples of Spatialism and of Geometric Abstractionism are not missing, up to the most recent movements such as Kinetic and Programmatic Art, Optical, Conceptual and Minimal Art, Arte Povera, the most typical Pop and its less known forms, and moreover Land Art, Fluxus, Body Art, European and Italian New Expressionism and various performances Cozzani personally took part in.

Battolini collection

In chronological order, Ferruccio and Anna Maria Battolini collection is the latest donation to the Municipality of La Spezia: it documents sixty years of activity in the world of art and of militant criticism. Works by the masters from the first generation of the XXth century as well as by those belonging to the mid-century and by more recent artists, up to the present-time promising artists, historically document the wealthy artistic tradition of this town.