Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection
– Themes and Variations, The Empire of Light exhibition. At the PeggyGuggenheim Collection the fourth exhibition with the curatorial formula, Themes
and Variations entitled The Empire of Light (until April 14), brilliantly
curated by Luca Massimo Barbero. The
project, offers a fresh perception of familiar and less familiar works from the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection through a multi-layered dialogue between Modernist
masters and contemporary artists, thanks also to loans from other collections. Within the same spaces, paintings from the 19th-
and 20th-century avant-gardes confront thematically with works produced
in the aftermath of the Second
World War and up to the threshold of the contemporary.
Above: Rene Magritte, Empire of Light, ca. 1953-54,
oil on canvas, from this painting the exhibition takes its name.
Themes
and Variations, The Empire of Light. Seminal paintings by masters such as Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Mark
Rothko, and Lucio Fontana are displayed next to paintings and sculptures in a
vivid contrast and comparison, provoking viewers to look beyond the customary
categories of the 20th century avant-garde, culminating in
contemporary work by Gabriele Basilico, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, Anish
Kapoor, Thomas Ruff, Kiki Smith, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Piotr Uklański.
Above: Gabriele
Basilico, Roma 2007 - Ponte Cestio (07A10-77), 2009, pure pigment print - And -
Henri Matisse, Pont Saint-Michel, 1903, oil on canvas.
Photograph courtesy PGC
Edgar Degas Jeune Fille Etendue et
Regardant un Album, ca. 1889, pastel on paper (private collection, New York) -
And - Kiki Smith, Sleepwalker with Owl, 2004, ink on Nepalese paper (Galleria
Raffaella Cortese, Milan).
Curator
Luca Massimo Barbero in front of Ellsworth Kelly, 42nd, 1958, oil on canvas.
Anish
Kapoor, Untitled, 2002, polished stainless steel and lacquer – And – Lucio
Fontana, Spatial Concept Expectations, 1967, waterpaint on canvas.
photograph
courtesy PGC
Salvador
Dali, Untitled, 1931, oil on canvas – And – Philippe Halsman, Salvador Dali’s
“Leopard Skull”, 1951, modern giclee print, Philippe Halsman/Magnum Photos.
Collectors
Adamaria and Marco Carbonari with Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s Philip Rylands
in front of David Hockney, Three Trees near Thixendale, Summer, 2007, oil on
eight canvases.
Themes
and Variations – Homage to Fausto Melotti.
The final section of the
Themes and Variations exhibition is a tribute to Italian art by the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, and specifically to Fausto Melotti (1901-1986),
with works by this poetic sculptor such as Contrappunto
II, Orfeo Dimentico, Chiave di Violino. Appropriately Melotti titled several of his
sculptures Theme and Variations,
whence derives the title of this series of exhibitions, since the first in
2002.
Above:
Fausto Melotti, Theme and Variations I, 1968, brass.
Detail
– Fausto Melotti, Denominator, 1970, brass.
photograph
courtesy PGC
Fausto
Melotti photographed by Ugo Mulas, 1968, copyright all rights reserved Eredi
Ugo Mulas.