“My Balla story began in October 1986 when I luckily ended up by chance in a small art gallery of Rome holding a retrospective exhibit of works owned by the Balla family. This is how the beginning of my collection began, as did my friendship with the artist’s daughters Luce and Elica Balla. They allowed me to get to know their father in an almost tangible way, not only as an artistic genius of this century, but also and especially as a gentle artistic soul and enthusiastic poet totally dedicated to his study of art in light, art in movement, and art in spirit.

In the last months of his life, my husband Gianni Cigna organized the first exhibition of the Biagiotti Cigna collection held in the prestigious Pushkin Museum of Moscow in July 1996. Through the donation to Fondazione Biagiotti Cigna, we wanted to continue to promote Gianni’s passion for beauty, his patronage to the arts, and the consolation that Balla’s art gave him during his illness.

I treasure these cherished memories and continue to maintain and promote them through additional personal acquisitions of works by Maestro Giacomo Balla, who was a keen researcher and demanding evolutionist, a “Futurist Genius” and the father of 20th century Italian design. I consider fashion design to be a movement of behavioral art to which I have contributed and continue to contribute passionately through my work as a researcher and enthusiastic art collector.”
Laura Biagiotti