We are open to communities, dialogue and experimentation

In 2015, on the occasion of the company’s 80th anniversary, we overhauled our oldest production site known as the Crogiolo, turning it into a multi-functional space. It owes its name to Filippo Marazzi Jr who turned the company’s first industrial building in Sassuolo into a cutting-edge research centre where artists, architects and potters could experiment freely with creative use of materials.

Since 2017, the Crogiolo has hosted the Municipality of Sassuolo’s cultural season. All events are free of charge and dedicated to the entire community.

Joan Fontcuberta’s Curiosa Meravigliosa for the Palazzo dei Musei in Reggio Emilia is the first permanent work of art made from ceramic slabs, installed on a ventilated wall in an open space and accessible to all. It is a monumental public artwork, sixteen metres tall and six metres wide, consisting of 12,000 photographs sent in by the city’s population, transformed by the artist, in partnership with Marazzi, into large photo-printed ceramic slabs.

“I like to consider a work of this kind as a ‘document-monument’,” Joan Fontcuberta says. “’Document’ because it is a sort of X-ray of a society and a culture; ‘monument’ because it bears witness to the passage of time. Within a few generations, ‘Curiosa Meravigliosa’ will be viewed as a collective memory capsule.”

The work won, in 2023, the 10th Edition of the CULTURE + ENTERPRISE Award in the PRO BONO VAAS APPLICATION category, selected from 132 applications received.
The prestigious Award, initiated by Federculture and The Round Table in collaboration with Fondazione Italiana Accenture and ALES, each year selects, rewards and shares the best projects carried out in Italy by companies, communication agencies, nonprofit organizations, public administrations, associations and cultural foundations that have successfully implemented a public-private collaboration.

For the exhibition Metamorfuoco. Sotto la luce di Tintoretto, which came to a conclusion on 31 January 2023 at Modena’s Gallerie Estensi, we partnered with British artist Simon Starling to create an involving artwork.

The installation places the cycle of paintings by Tintoretto alongside woodcuts and contemporary works, taken from the Gallerie Estensi’s archives, to stimulate reflection about the effects of climate change. The special porcelain stoneware floor made by Marazzi to the artist’s design is an integral part of the work.

The artist used the ceramic surfaces as a blank canvas on which he drew natural elements that enter into dialogue with the figures in the Tintoretto cycle. The exquisite artistic mosaic is made up of about 60 decorations, each of them different. The result is a circular space designed by Starling to immerse visitors in an environment to walk through and admire Tintoretto’s masterpiece suspended above their heads.

“Luigi Ghirri. The Marazzi Years 1975-1985” is a collection of almost completely unseen works. They are limited edition photos and prints, for the most part never exposed or published, fruit of the partnership between Luigi Ghirri and Marazzi and preserved for decades in the Emilian company’s archives.

Thanks to Marazzi’s commitment and partnership with the Archivio Luigi Ghirri archive, these photographs have become the hub of an major operation involving the creation of a precious volume, a site providing further information, and an exhibition housed first in the rooms of the Musei Civici in Reggio Emilia with a small cameo for the 2021 edition of Fotografia Europea, then in the rooms of the Appartamento dei Giganti apartment in Sassuolo’s Palazzo Ducale, part of the Gallerie Estensi gallery, concluding at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.

In the cinema field, in 2022 we supported Matteo Parisini‘s docufilm Infinito. L’Universo di Luigi Ghirri dedicated to the Italian photographer born and raised between Reggio Emilia and Modena. After its premiere at the Rome Film Fest 2022, the documentary has played a lead role in a tour of some of the most important Italian autumn film festivals and art locations.

In 2022 we received the Best Company Award, given to companies who commit themselves in the field of art. It is awarded by Artribune, the most authoritative Italian platform for content and services dedicated to contemporary art and culture.

The award is recognition for the commitment of our company and personnel in the active partnership with and support of institutions, cultural organisations, hospitals and non-profits working in our area in various ways.

We partner with institutions to put on projects for citizens such as cycle lanes, public parks and work which benefits the entire community, with a particular eye at young people and people with illnesses or disabilities.

In 2022 we donated two portable ECG machines to the Modena local health authority for the home care service, and a cutting-edge retinograph for use in local surgeries for people suffering from systemic conditions, and along with another eight companies in the ceramics district, we financed the purchase of an innovative radiological diagnostics system for the Sassuolo hospital. We also contributed to “Progetti del Cuore”’ (‘Heart Projects’) with the purchase of an ambulance for the Sassuolo blue cross organisation for transporting people with disabilities.

We continue to support the Italian Lymphoma Foundation (FIL, Fondazione Italiana Linfomi), a charity which carries out research looking for a cure for lymphomas and lymphoproliferative diseases, and make our Pietro and Maria Marazzi Training Centre available permanently and completely free of charge to the red and blue cross organisations.

In Catania, Sicily, we were partners of the project led by the LAD Onlus “La Casa Abbraccio” charity. We provided floor and wall tiles free of charge for the house to be used for children suffering from severe tumours and leukaemia, a place to help stimulate creativity and alleviate the pain. This outstanding work of architecture, designed by the Frontini Terrana architects practice, has won sponsorship from the International Union of Architects, the Consiglio Nazionale Architetti P.P.C., the Istituto Nazionale di Bioarchitettura, Federarchitetti, the Sicilian Regional Council, Inarch Sicilia and Inbar. The energy strategies adopted enable the building to meet the requirements for the nZEB category for ultra-high energy efficiency, with the aim of obtaining CasaClima Nature certification.