Friday, February 15, 2013

Venice: Casa dei Tre Oci – Gianni Berengo Gardin exhibition.


Venice: Casa dei Tre Oci – Gianni Berengo Gardin exhibition. The Casa dei Tre Oci (which translates as the house of the three eyes) on the Giudecca Island presents a world premier retrospective of one of the greatest Italian photographers: Gianni Berengo Gardin, on show until May 12.  It is the most complete anthological exhibition of the master showing 130 photos, and is curated by Denis Curti.
Above: The Casa dei Tre Oci is a splendid example of early 20th-century Venetian architecture, which was designed by the artist Mario De Maria (Marius Pictor) and built in 1913.  Intended as a studio-house by Mario, it was his son Astolfo, a painter like his father, who actually lived in it. Always a place of artistic and cultural production, a center for meetings and debates, a studio for artists taking part in the Biennale and a welcoming space for intellectuals visiting Venice, it remained active and lively until the end of the 1980s.  The Casa dei Tre Oci became a public exhibition space in 2012 with particular attention to photography.
 
Gianni Berengo Gardin exhibition. Gianni Berengo Gardin considers this exhibition, the most representative of his career.  The analogical prints on display trace his work as a reporter and are the mirror of an artist who has made ethics his banner. He wanted to look back through all his production:  the past exhibitions, the books (more than 200) the newspapers and the magazines to reread everything through the eyes of the present, to select those pictures that would best recount his story, a synthesis of his journey as a photographer, from his debut to the last picture taken with a digital camera, of a young couple kissing in the street.
Above: The maestro with his Leica signing copies of the catalogue.

  Gianni Berengo Gardin - Great Britain, 1977
 
Fabio Achilli director of the Fondazione di Venezia who owns, together with Polymnia Venezia the Casa dei Tre Oci and the curator of the exhibition Denis Curti.
 
 Gianni Berengo Gardin – Yugoslavia 1979

Contrasto’s editorial director Alessandra Mauro. The exhibition was produced by Civita Tre Venezie and Contrasto with the support of Veneto Banca and the Regione Veneto.  

 
Two great photographer meet up for a chat; Manfredi Bellati congratulates Gianni Berengo Gardin on the exhibition. Whilst photographer Alexandre Veron, documents the occasion.

  photograph by manfredi bellati
Gianni Berengo Gardin exhibition
 
Gianni Berengo Gardin – Milano 1987

Berengo Gardin, an observant narrator of everyday life, in all its multiple aspects and its evolution, he is an artist who has immortalized the history of Italy in more than a million shots.  Born in the 1940s, he prefers black and white, not only for generational reasons, but because ‘color distracts the photographer and the observer’.
 
 
Art press officer Valeria Regazzoni and artist Liselotte Hohs

 

Gianni Berengo Gardin exhibition
 Author Antonio Marazzi

Gianni Berengo Gardin – Tuscany 1978
The photographer, an enthusiasm for the street, for ordinary people met by chance, surprising embraces stolen in everyday life: in every photo, each one of us finds a little of himself, his story, his memories. His photos are capable of evoking simple and precious life; they cross through fields and squares, recount the story and sinuous paths of life. They are archetypes of the Italian imagination; they touch us and immediately become familiar. People, objects, close-ups, historical monuments. Tangible, never abstract images, but above all real images.
 Photograph by manfredi bellati
 
An honored guest waits patiently
Francesca Borsato

The ‘backdrop” of view from the Casa dei Tre Oci