“Don’t expect something linear, but rather flashes of memories,” says Siegfried de Rachewiltz. We are in Brunnenburg Castle, in a room lined with books. On the left is a trifora window that reveals glimpses of the green Merano valley through its columns. And on a beige fabric sofa with a backrest that curves outwards at the sides sits Mary de Rachewiltz. This July 9th she will celebrate her hundredth birthday. Her long pearl white hair is held in place by a cobalt blue headband, and she welcomes us with an air that is both energetic and polite. She clearly knows how to put people at ease, which helps us forget the aura of this place, where her father, the poet Ezra Pound, lived for 4 years, between 1958 and 1962. It is not difficult to imagine why, around twenty years later, Francesco Conz, the collector and publisher, chose this place to hold his artistic residencies. An initiative that led to La Livre – his most monumental and eye-catching project – conceived as a collective artist’s book and a tribute to Pound and his Cantos. Completed after Conz’s death and published only recently, La Livre (with its 11 boxes) is today displayed for the first time ever at Museion Passage. “Ideas about my father were always in the air,” smiles Mary de Rachewiltz, revealing that the extraordinary experience of living in Brunnenburg with figures who have molded the history of art and literature, was totally ordinary for her.
With this contribution Museion wants to celebrate the 100th birthday of Mary de Rachewiltz, born July 9, 1925, and congratulate her for the incredible life she lived and the contribution she was able to make to the art community and beyond.
Was there a specific moment that sparked in Francesco Conz the idea for La Livre?
Siegfried de Rachewiltz: Conz had been in touch with us and had written letters to my mother and then to me. Everything began with a performance by Daniel Spoerri and his soups (Zehn Suppenrezepte, 1985). This involved women from the Merano circle, including my wife, cooking a series of soups. Over a hundred people took part, and Spoerri, as we know, signed and gave the tablecloth with the leftovers to my wife. Then, there was that slightly crazy guitarist and performer, Giuseppe Desiato, who played all night here. Under the effect of a certain amount of wine, a group of guests ended up going down to Merano and causing a bit of a commotion.
Didn’t these artistic invasions upset a place like this, that is so full of history and silence?
Mary De Rachewiltz: No, we were young too! The people we had here were certainly entertaining, and it was never boring.
SDR: Yes, we were younger, let’s say (smiles, ed.). There was a saying here “if they’re not crazy we don’t want them”. It was a joke, but that was our motto, our sign over the door. The experience with Conz was not a unique event, let’s say, but the continuation of a lifestyle that my mother and father (Mary and Boris de Rachewiltz ed.) have enjoyed ever since they came here.
But when Conz proposed staging a Dick Higgins performance that involved setting fire to a piano on the castle terrace, you said no.
SDR: Yes, it’s true … I host a cello festival here and I have a certain respect for musical instruments and that performance seemed a bit over the top to me!
Talking about the “lifestyle” Mary De Rachewiltz and her husband Boris, your father, enjoyed at Brunnenburg … it’s a well-known fact that the 1950s and ‘60s were a golden age of art and culture for Merano.
SDR: Yes, there was this renaissance, this upheaval in Merano. It is a period that is described in Luigi Serravalli’s book, “A Merano in attesa di Ezra Pound” (Waiting for Ezra Pound in Merano). We were waiting for this grandfather to finally appear on the horizon. We had never met him in person, and my sister and I had only exchanged letters with him. In the meantime, however, Giovanni (Vanni) Scheiwiller had brought writers here that he published in his “All’insegna del Pesce d’Oro” series. Even Quasimodo came here before he won the Nobel Prize for literature.
So, it’s clear why Conz was fascinated by Brunnenburg…
SDR: There was such a stir that Conz, who had a great nose for these things, probably thought it would be a good place for artist projects.
MDR: Yes, a lot of people with strange ideas passed through here … (smiles ed.)
There was also Conz’s fascination with Pound’s work and his approach to experimentation with languages. It is no coincidence that all the artists invited here gravitated around the Visual and Concrete Poetry movements. In this sense, in a context like the Alto Adige of this period, the castle was the ideal location.
SDR: I don’t know where else he could have gone with these kinds of ideas. You have to think back to that time, and you’re right when you say that Conz genuinely admired the iconoclastic and experimental aspect of Pound’s work. He believed that the image of the poet and artist as someone who succeeds in changing things was created by Pound. Conz wanted art to have strength and power, to be an influence in terms of constructive anarchy, and to break certain outdated patterns that had become too comfortable and bourgeois. He wanted to épater le bourgeois, to scandalize the bourgeoisie, which, of course, Conz belonged to. He always did this, though, in a joking, playful way. He had these ideas that he would then put together, and out of it would come something like the theater of the absurd.
So, these connections were spontaneous?
SDR: I think Conz knew what he was doing. He knew this world better than anyone else and he knew who he wanted to invite. I remember him once, standing on the castle terrace and giving me a list of all the artists he wanted to bring here …
Museion team visiting Mary de Rachewiltz
From the photographs and anecdotes of this time, there seems to have been a very strong convivial mood and an emphasis on the importance of being together.
SDR: Well, look, there was never any sense of a rush or a schedule to follow. We used to say, let’s just put these artists together and see what happens. Nothing specific was planned. We simply brought these energies together and let them develop spontaneously, while enjoying the view and the landscape. The place itself is an inspiration, and it inspires indolence too. It seems to me that these things came in an unstoppable flow. You could put something there and something would happen without any set pattern.
A genuine Fluxus experience.
SDR: I think Conz was able to make all his artists feel that they were part of a unique world, and that wherever they came together, they would create their own special sphere. This sensation, almost of traveling in time and space, brought together people from Brazil, the United States, Slavic countries and so on.
Was it a microcosm?
SDR:It was the tribe. A tribe of artists.
Going back to the performance with Spoerri’s soups, did they taste good?
SDR: Yes, yes, the recipes were all very good. I remember tasting some of them and we finished them all. In fact, we devoured them…
Brunnenburg (Castel Fontana) (link https://www.brunnenburg.net/it/) near Merano hosts the Alto Adige Agricultural Museum, a memorial dedicated to Ezra Pound, and international conferences and residencies linked to the poet and musical events. The museum can be visited from April to October.
The exhibition You and the Night and the Music: Francesco Conz Editions from the Museion Collection exploits the museum collection to explore the cultural legacy and artistic vision of Francesco Conz. An important figure, who worked with Fluxus, Visual Poetry and Concrete Poetry artists, and played a decisive role in disseminating these artistic practices in Italy and abroad.
Museion Passage, free admission. Until 31.01.2026
