How did you start collecting Andy Wahrol’s work, and what was the first piece in your collection?
I was born into an artistic family; both my parents, Pietro Rosini and Annamaria Cosenza, were art collectors and dealers, running the Rosini Gallery in our hometown Riccione, Italy. I started helping them early on while I also worked in an art gallery dedicated to graphic designs and prints, which they opened with Nicola Marra under the very same porch across the hall of our family’s gallery.
Warhol was one of the first artists I was able to add to my personal collection, starting with the Ladies and Gentlemen series of screen prints. I bought my first satchel between 1975 and 1976 when I was just a kid; I didn’t have much money on my own then. I remember persuading my mother and brother to invest in this wallet and buy a few extra copies. I had also become friends with the photographer Dino Pedriali, who was Warhol’s assistant at the time, so I also tried to get other folders at an advantageous price.
Created in 1975, Ladies and Gentlemen is a series of glamorous portraits of socially marginalized transvestites and drag queens from the “Gilden Grape Club” who, thanks to Warhol, have become as famous as the VIPs of Studio 54, which was one of the liveliest places meet again for music, art and nightlife in 1970s New York. Since that day our Andy Warhol collection has grown to 2-300 works, becoming one of the most important and representative collections of Andy Warhol’s work in Europe, if not in the world.
Ladies & Gentlemen, Andy Warhol (1975). Photo courtesy of the Rosini-Gutman collection