Venice: Correr Museum - Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession

Correr Museum: Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition. A century after his acclaimed participation in the Venice Biennale (1910), Gustav Klimt returns to the lagoon as the protagonist of a remarkable exhibition in the rooms of the Correr Museum, until July 8. It is the perfect occasion to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth (1862-2012). Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession was curated by Alfred Weidinger and features an exceptional series of paintings, rare and precious drawings, furniture and elegant jewelry, but also elaborate reconstructions and interesting historical documents. The aim is to introduce the visitor to the genesis and evolution, in both architecture and painting, of Klimt’s work and that of the other protagonists of the Viennese Secession. The movement was one of the highest peaks in European Modernism and counted among its key players such artists as George Minne, Jan Toorop, Fernand Khnopff, Koloman Moser, and above all Klimt’s companion on many intellectual ventures and projects, Josef Hoffmann.

Above: Gustav Klimt: Salome (Judith II), 1909 – oil on canvas.

Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition. Probably the focal point of the exhibition Gustav Klimt’s spectacular Beethoven Frieze triptych, 1901-02.

Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition. Model of the Kunstschau exhibition hall designed  by Josef Hoffmann, 1908-09. Execution: modellwerkstatt Gerhard Stocker, 2008 - Maple wood, scale 1:50.

 

Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition.  Josef Hoffmann designed brooch, 1905, Model G 368 – execution: Wiener Werkstatte/Karl Ponocny – silver, coral, lapis lazuli, malachite, moonstone.

Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition. Gustav Klimt: Portrait of Marie Henneberg, 1901-02 - oil on canvas.

Gustav Klimt in the Sign of Hoffmann and the Secession exhibition.  Josef Hoffmann: table and a pair of chairs from the boudoir of Hermine Gallia (whose portrait, by Gustav Klimt is in the background) c. 1912n- lacquered and gilded wood, brass, other material.

Venice: Healing Garden for the San Camillo Hospital at the Lido.

Palazzo Pisani Moretta: benefit for a Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital. The dinner to collect funds for the Healing Garden project (Un Giardino Per Rivivere) at the San Camillo Hospital on the Lido, was held at Palazzo Pisani Moretta and was graciously sponsored by the owners of the palazzo and by the Calieron Confraternity. A garden for the senses, the Healing Garden is a  natural place for mental and physical stimulation, and as such, is designed to provide maximum possible sensory richness. The sight is the sense that dominates most of the sensory experiences, but sometimes, you simply close your eyes and are receptive to noticing that other senses provide other rich connections. Chromatherapy and aromatherapy are now two very useful and strategic approaches to build and order sensory stress therapeutic purposes, but also "hearing" and "feel" can play a very important role in the natural area of the garden.

Contribute: You too can contribute to realize the Healing Garden, log onto the website of Un Giardino Per Rivivere and go to: Come Aiutarci.

Palazzo Pisani Moretta: benefit for a Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital.   Garden designer, Benedetta Piccolomini, landscape architect, Paolo Sgaravatti and neurologist, Francesca Meneghello are the people responsible for the Healing Garden project.

 photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

  

Palazzo Pisani Moretta: benefit for a Healing Garden at the San Camillo Hospital.  In the spectacular candle lit salone on the piano nobile of Palazzo Pisani Moretta a long table was set up with gourmet food prepared by the Calieron Confraternity.

   photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

Palazzo Pisani Moretta: Calieron Confraternity. Some of the eighteen members of the Confraternita’ del Calieron or Calieron Confraternity, which was founded in 1994 by a group of gentlemen who love good food and drink. The gentlemen cooks are professional architects, doctors, notaries, financiers, industrialists, landowners and insurance brokers, two of them also act as sommeliers.  They take pleasure in gastronomy and when business permits they organize and cook lunches and dinners for friends in and around Italy, as well as abroad. Their headquarters is at the Villa Marcello between Padua and Treviso.  Caileron in Veneto dialect is the big copper pot you cook polenta in and Calieron is also a trophy, which is “up for grabs” each year among the confraternity in the challenge between the stoves.   The winner, chosen by a jury formed by the wives and invited guests, is elected president for a year.

Above: Alvise Cerato, Franco Moschini, Alessandro Badoglio, Silvio Marsoni, Gianluca Cavatorta, Alvise Alverà, Beppi Franchin, Paolo de Marzi, Giorgio Montesi, Roberto di Majo and Giovanni Borri.

Palazzo Pisani Moretta: Calieron Confraternity.  a detail of the Calieron Confraternity “uniform”; under a business suit an apron embroidered with their “crest” and initials.

Venice: Restaurant de Venise – Judi Harvest - Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice exhibition.

Venice: Restaurant de Venise – Judi Harvest - Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice exhibition.  Judi Harvest’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice is a "...series, an evolution of the themes of my work: the fragility of life and the search for beauty. It continues to examine how did we get here, where are we going and why are we here. This collage series, like my other large works in Venice that proceeded it, is a happy marriage of the ancient techniques of Venice and contemporary forms and media.”  Judi explains.

  

. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice. Judi Harvest receives collectors, friends and press in the bar area of the Bistrot de Venise where her exhibition is hung, until April 5th.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice. On a background of a Tiepolo ceiling astronauts, spaceships and planets are collaged.  “Venice has more full moons than anywhere else on the planet.  Satellites, aliens and a Venetian restaurant have more in common than meets the eye. As with all great works of art and relationships, they are concerned with communication, long before cell phones and email, news spread quickly and elegantly over food and drinks in Venice.” And more on Venice, “Of course gondolas are not rockets and vaporettos are not rovers, but the canals move and people communicate and work with their hands. Martians have come here to observe one of the last places on earth where meaningful conversations still happen at the table, where beauty is celebrated and computers have not replaced the artist’s hands.” Judi concludes.

 

Bistrot de Venise.  “Before there were art galleries in Venice, artists were invited to exhibit their work in restaurants. In fact, the Venice Biennale was created over coffee and drinks at the Caffe Florian. This exhibition keeps that tradition alive.In this age of wireless relationships, it is important to remember and frequent the places where food, wine and conversations became and still are, an art form.”

Above. One of the rooms of the Bistrot de Venise. The restaurant first opened in 1993 and has since become a hangout and meeting place where the figurative arts, poetry and culture combine, simply, with food and wine.

 

Bistrot de Venise. From Portoguaro, chef Mario Missese has been cooking in Venice since the 1980’s his food is “tasty and colorful” and is a modern reinterpretations of historical Venetian cuisine.

Bistrot de Venise. Bavetta shaped spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella and topped with basil pesto coulis.

 Architect and designer Antonio Zambusi.

Will Mattia grow up to be an architect or designer like his father, mother and grandfather above? 

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice. Judi Harvest draws in the visitor’s book, she is siting between art events organizer, Mario Di Martino and to her left, the curator of her exhibition, Emanuele Horodniceanu.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venice. The drawing in the pages of the restaurant’s visitors book depicts the people at the table, Judi used all the ingredients on hand; lipstick, candle wax, red wine, friends, food, art, Martians, satellites, stars, chocolate and coffee….to create it.

 

Bistrot de Venise.  One of the many deserts. The caramelized sugar topping on this delicious trio is inspired by Murano glass, it sits on top of a chocolate and coconut glace, in the middle are crumbled marron glaces and in the foreground, a mandarin and coffee sorbet a on a crumble base.

Palazzo Fortuny: Restoration of the Mariano Fortuny’s Bayreuth Theatre model

Palazzo Fortuny: Restoration of the Mariano Fortuny’s Bayreuth Theatre model. Donations are open, buy a virtual seat for yourself and your friends and contribute to the restoration of the Mariano Fortuny’s Bayreuth Theatre model, which urgently needs your help. Seating according to color are inspired by certain Wagnerian works that Mariano Fortuny depicted in paintings and etchings: YELLOW: Flower Maidens (E 200 $ 280) running after each other and playing in Parsifal: RED: Wotan (E 100 $140), the King of the Gods found in the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung; BLUE: Sieglinde (E 50 $ 70), Sigmund’s sister in The Valkyrie and finally PURPLE: Mime (E 25 $ 35), a character present both in The Rhine Gold and Siegfried. For more information contact The Venice Foundation.

Palazzo Fortuny: Restoration of the Mariano Fortuny’s Bayreuth Theatre model.  Since 1891 Mariano Fortuny was completely captivated by the allure of the staging of Wagner’s theatre, however many years passed before he concretely measured himself against the theatre experimenting at length with both lighting and technology and the preparation of scenographic sketches.  It was in fact starting with the realization of scenographies linked to the works of Wagner that this model was born in 1903.  Made of wood and metal and now kept in the atelier, it is a reconstruction of the layout and the risers of the setting of the German Bayreuth Theatre. This model is an intricate and complex system made up of small cables, electrical power transformers and light bulbs; of wings and scenes depicted on cardboard. 

 

Palazzo Fortuny: Restoration of the Mariano Fortuny’s Bayreuth Theatre model. Just to give you an idea of the sorry state the model is in.

Spring at Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera, Wax Figures in Venice and in Italy exhibition.

photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

Spring at Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera, Wax Figures in Venice and in Italy. The world’s first exhibition on wax portraits is on at Palazzo Fortuny, Avere Una Bella Cera, Wax Figures in Venice and in Italy, until June 25.  It analyses a field that has been studied very little by art historians: that of life-size wax figures.  The project was inspired by two fortunate coincidences, the existence of a series of life- size wax portraits in Venice’s public collections and churches, and the centenary of the publication of the “History of Portraiture in Wax”, written by the famous Viennese art historian Julius von Schlosser and the first work devoted to the history of wax portraits. A superb Italian translation of Schlosser’s work by Andrea Daninos, curator of the Venice exhibition, has recently been published, complete with an extensive and detailed critical commentary.

Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera. The Venetian exhibition is the outcome of more than three years of research and, for the first time, it brings together nearly all of the extant sculptures in Italy, most of which unpublished or never displayed before
.  The rooms of Palazzo Fortuny, considered a major attraction for art lovers visiting Venice, are beautifully transformed with an exhibition project by Daniela Ferretti, into a veritable wax museum, re-creating the fascinating atmosphere that always surrounds such displays.

Above: Andrea Daninos curator of the exhibition and Daniela Ferretti who conceived the exhibition project.

Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera.  The exhibition has several sculptures by two artists who worked outside Italy, anticipating Madame Tussaud’s famous museum. This section present the portrait of Marie Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile by Joseph Müller-Deym, a mysterious Austrian nobleman who owned a famous wax museum in Vienna in the 18th century, and the works that the Piedmontese Francesco Orso, who opened a similar wax exhibition in Paris during the period of the French Revolution, made for the Savoyard court: the busts of Victoria of Savoy-Soissons (above top c.1780-85), Victor Amadeus III of Savoy and Maria Antonia Ferdinanda de Bourbon (above bottom c. 1780-85).

 

Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera. The exhibition itinerary continues with the faces of saints and criminals, two recurrent subjects in the ceroplastic tradition. The former are represented by twelve busts of Franciscans (above), made of wax and with glass eyes and real hair; datable to the 18th century, they are unique in religious iconography made of wax. They will be juxtaposed with a series of twelve wax portraits of criminals modeled in the late 19th century by Lorenzo Tenchini, a pupil of Cesare Lombroso. Three wax busts, the only Italian examples of anthropological portraits, will be displayed alongside them. Depicting a Caucasian, an Ethiopian (above c. 1867) and a Bedouin, they were made by Remigio Lei, a wax model maker from Modena, in the second half of the 19th century for the ethnographic-anthropological collection of the local anatomical museum.

photographs and copyright by Manfredi Bellati

Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera. The main section of the exhibition is devoted to wax portraiture in Italy, is introduced by two life-size figures of 18th-century Venetian children in period costumes (above c. 1790-95). The two works, cited by Schlosser and Mario Praz (the latter compared them to the leading figures in Henry James’s novel The Turn of the Screw), have long been in the storerooms of the Palazzo Mocenigo and have not been displayed publicly for decades. Their unrivalled craftsmanship and disturbing realism will unquestionably astonish visitors. 

  photograph courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Palazzo Fortuny: Avere Una Bella Cera. The Bologna School, in which the art of life-size wax portraiture was extremely popular, will be represented by a series of works by Luigi Dardani, Filippo Scandellari and Angelo Gabriello Piò.

Above: Luigi Dardini’s Francesco Zambeccari, 1750 circa Bologna.