The Paolo Antonacci Gallery presents for the first time in Italy the prestigious private collection of paintings 19th century Danes by the Italian-Danish artist and collector Gemma Hartmann: a collection of about 50 works by artists Northern Europeans belonging to the so-called "Danish Golden Age", from Albert Küchler to Ernst Meyer, from Godfred Christensen to Christian Jensen, from Otto Bache to Thorald Læssöe, from Wilhelm Marstrand to Vilhelm Rosenstand, plus a dozen watercolors by Hartmann herself.
Gemma Hartmann was born in Copenhagen in the early 1940s. She arrives in Rome with her parents over the years '50. His father, Jorgen Birkedal Hartmann, Danish, was an art historian (expert of the neoclassical sculptor Thorvaldsen) and one of the founders of the Academy of Denmark in 1958 in Valle Giulia.
In 1960 Gemma graduated in painting, sculpture and etching from the Academy of Fine Arts in via Ripetta. Since 1965 she has held numerous personal and collective exhibitions in Rome.
Hartmann achieves various awards nationally and internationally. Many critics deal with her artistic production, including Marcello Avenali, Antonio Spinosa, Federico Zeri, Vittorio Sgarbi. Her works appear in Italian and foreign collections, mainly in Copenhagen, Padua and in the capital, at the headquarters the central bank of Rome and the ancient Caffè Greco in via Condotti (Saletta Rossa).
Artist in first person but also passionate about art and great collector, he spends most of the its existence in Rome and died there in late 2012.
Gemma Hartmann is still known to most for her assiduous collaboration with La Strenna dei Romanisti: yes it deals with the prestigious volume presented every year, since 1940, by the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, one publication of seven hundred pages containing articles concerning facts, news, humanistic discoveries,
never published in Rome. The "Group of Romanists", made up of more than one hundred authoritative scholars, elects annually an editorial committee made up of experts on various topics, from archeology to music, from literature on the history of architecture, which meet at the Marco Besso Foundation in Rome and examine
each time all the articles presented to the Group secretariat. Hartmann has been providing pages since 1969 of the publication with his watercolors; since 1984 he is also responsible for coordination and layout of the same and author of articles for the volume; in 1993 she was officially elected to the "Group of Romanists".
She donated his collection of Strenne dei Romanisti to the Italian Institute of Graphics.
