Venice: Spring Exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny. The Palazzo Fortuny museum reopens for the Spring Exhibition, until May 8th, proposing three simultaneous experiences, always in line with its own connotation of exhibition space as both a museum and a laboratory.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino – The Revolution of Color. In the evocative setting that highlights the interplays between the colors of the clothes and the paintings on display in a perfect harmony of intent between her “world” and that of Mariano Fortuny the Roberta di Camerino, The Revolution of Color exhibition, is mounted.
Above: The long dress in the center is called Califfa, 1974, it is in heavy woolen jersey with a trompe-l’oeil effect.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino. The “total look” of clothes, and above all accessories, through which the great Venetian designer, Giuliana di Camerino, in art Roberta (after the film that included the song “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, which stirred deep feeling for her), is recognized for having effected a genuine revolution in the 1950s: the celebrated “revolution of color.”
Above: The long dress at the front is called Clan, 1974, and has a trompe-l’oeil shirt, jacket, skirt and belt effect printed on it.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino. Roberta di Camerino is Giuliana’s daughter; she also takes her name from the famous film so dear to Giuliana.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino – a detail. A detail of a collection of four charm bracelets belonging to the designer and worn by her daughter round her neck. All the charms were gifts from Roberta to her mother, over the years, and portray antique handbags.
Photograph by Manfredi Bellati
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino. The 1970s marked the years when the whole range of products were born with the trademark “R”, umbrellas, scarves, perfume, etc.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino. Via a few very clever inventions, above all the use of velvet and unusual color combinations for women’s handbags, as well as fun and quirky shapes like the “Bagonghi” traveling case (much loved by Princess Grace of Monaco), the Roberta style brought a breath of fresh air and novelty in the world of fashion.
Palazzo Fortuny: Roberta di Camerino – detail. A detail of one of the sixty handbags dating from the 1950s until the 1970s that are present in the exhibition. Belts and buckles are recurring themes in Giuliana’s collections.
Palazzo Fortuny: Paolo Ventura – Automation. L’Automa or automation is an unpublished visual narrative journey set in Venice during the Second World War, created by photographer Paolo Ventura, who lives and works in New York. The city of Venice and its components are described and interpreted via a score of photographs, a model and a selection of drawings and watercolor studies of characters and environments, presenting a reality at the same time faithful and fanciful, if not fundamentally dream like.
Photograph by Manfredi Bellati
Palazzo Fortuny: Paolo Ventura. A set of Paolo Ventura’s New York studio is mounted in the palazzo. The ambivalent and antithetic nature of a theatre’s story is necessarily the result of the “modus operandi” of the artist who, with theses words illustrates his own work: “I reconstruct in my studio very realistic sets that then, once individuated the right point of view, I photograph with natural light. This way of working enables me to give shape to my imaginary worlds and to create a relationship of ambiguity with who is watching them. What I do photograph doesn’t exist, but I try to make it look the truest possible.”
Palazzo Fortuny: Paolo Ventura. The plot unfolds in 1943, under the German occupation. Venice is an empty city, permanently shrouded in a thin, surreal mist that flattens the surfaces and turns it into a kind of theatrical backdrop. Here an old Jew, by now all alone. As well as his books he is passionate about automations”, and decides to build himself one….
Palazzo Fortuny: Paolo Ventura. The model for the automation featured in the photographs.
Photograph by Manfredi Bellati
Palazzo Fortuny: Michelangelo Penso – Genetic Circuit RSBP. Circuito Genetico RSBP or genetic circuit is the title of the exhibition by the Venetian artist Michelangelo Penso; a series of recent works developing the research based on scientific observation of the universe, which characterizes his most recent works.
Palazzo Fortuny: Michelangelo Penso. The observation and analysis of the images of micro-organisms leads to the creation of sculptures which have the titles and structures of complex mathematical formulas. The distance and the dichotomy between image and reality is “bridged” thanks to science, which is used as a vector for staging the invisible: thus the work leaps the frontiers between Art and Science and joins itself to myth and the spiritual dimension.
Above: The heart of the exhibition is the site specific installation Genetic Circuit RSBP inspired by the genetic circuits and created in oil-resistant rubber.
Palazzo Fortuny: Michelangelo Penso. Other works in the exhibition are created using colored polyester straps in various forms complete the exhibition.
Palazzo Fortuny. At the opening of the Spring Exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny, the Prosecco di Valdobbiadine was offered by Bisol and served in the courtyard.
Naïf artist, Liselotte Hohs.
Venetian artist, Fabrizzio Plessi.
Lamya Bottazzo and Doge. Note her Roberta di Camerino handbag.
