Venice: Spring at Palazzo Fortuny. The Spring at Palazzo Fortuny until July 14, brings
together five exhibitions by talented women artists: Dora Maar’s
Notwithstanding Picasso – Ritsue Mishima’s Tras Forma – Barbara Paganin’s Open
Memory – Anne-Karin Furunes’s Shadows and The Amazons of Photography from the
Collection of Mario Trevisan.
Venice: Spring at Palazzo Fortuny – Part I: Dora Maar – Notwithstanding
Picasso. Henrietta Theodora Markovitch better
known as Dora Maar (1907-1997) was a beautiful French photographer,
poet and painter of Croatian descent, best known for being a lover
and muse of Pablo Picasso.
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Photo by Xavier Grandsart - courtesy Fortuny Museum
Dora Maar –
Notwithstanding Picasso.
A woman of rare beauty and enigmatic personality who
had seduced Picasso, the leading painter of the century and, subsequently
abandoned, had sunk into madness, living cut off from the world for the
remaining fifty years of her life. “Sacrificed to the Minotaur”, “Segregated
with her musty phantoms”, “Dora, painted tears” were some of the titles in the
newspapers when her goods were cold at auction after her death.
Above. Man Ray - Portrait de Dora Maar (solarisation),
1936, silver
bromide gelatin print.
photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati
Dora
Maar – Notwithstanding Picasso. Dora Maar was an extraordinary artist in her
own right. This exhibition aims to
highlight her singular talent and is the first show to be dedicated to her photography
in Italy. Thanks to loans from important museums and private collections, the
exhibition, comprising over one hundred works, including some unpublished ones of
great interest, examines her career and personality.
Above.
Dora Maar – Vieille Femme et Enfant (dit Le Pisseur) – 1935c., vintage silver
bromide gelatin print.
The
Dora Maar exhibition is a project by, as well as, the layout of Daniela
Ferretti.
Dora
Maar – Notwithstanding Picasso. Dora had a multi-faceted personality as well as
being a great photographer.
Above.
Dora Maar – Homme sur un Trottoir, Trappe de Visite, 1935c. vintage silver
gelatin print.
The
curator of the exhibition Victoria Combalía, a scholar who has dedicated much
time to studying Maar.
Dora Maar, by SIAE 2013 - photo credit: photographic archives Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid – courtesy Palazzo Fortuny
Dora Maar - Picasso Debout Travaillant à Guernica dans son Atelier des
Grands-Augustins, 1937,silver gelatin print.
Dora Maar – Notwithstanding Picasso. Dora was certainly a
complex and tormented woman as portrayed in Picasso’s pictures, but also acute,
intelligent and politically involved.
Above.
Pablo Picasso, Tete de Femme (Dora Maar), 1939, oil on canvas.
Spring at Palazzo Fortuny: Ritsue Mishima – Tras Forma. Artist Ritsue Mishima (1962) draws stimuli for her work from natural
forms and reflections of light: her glass is transparent, colorless, and
conveys a sense of purity and luminosity, capturing and expanding the light and
colors its surroundings. This exhibition presents her latest creations, the
result of a careful analysis of the modus operandi of Mariano Fortuny.
Above.
Ritsue Mishima – Titano, 2013, glass.
photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati
Artist Mirco Marchelli
Ritsue
Mishima – Tras Forma.
The artist pays close attention to the space in which she places her works; the
play of transparency and of reflections produces infinite visual variations for
the subject.
Above.
Ketty Alvera with a sculpture by Ritsue Mishima.
Ritsue Mishima – Tras Forma. The thousand-year-old tradition of making glass in
Venice, seen through the lens of Mishima’s Japanese culture, results in works
forming a highly contemporary alphabet.
Above.
Ritsue Mishima – Melograni, 2013, glass.
photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati
Spring at Palazzo Fortuny: Barbara Paganin – Open Memory.
Venetian artist Barbara Paganin’s exhibition presents jewels and stories that
draw their inspiration from the emotions of their past. Tangible elements of borrowed memories:
19th-century miniatures, porcelain animal, good-luck charms, depicting mice,
hippopotamuses, rabbits, ivory elephants, a little compass, the queen from a
chess set… This is the first time the artist has chosen to include “extraneous”
elements and objets trouvés in her work. Her work begins with a search among
the antiques shops of Venice to find these little objects, which one could
imagine were once jealously guarded in some child’s “treasure casket”.
Above. Barbara Paganin and one of the 25 brooches from Open
Memory display.
Photograph by Alice Pavesi Fiori, courtesy Palazzo Fortuny
Barbara Paganin – Open Memory. This is the first time the
artist has chosen to include “extraneous” elements and objets trouvés in her work.
Her work begins with a search among the antiques shops of Venice to find these
little objects, which one could imagine were once jealously guarded in some
child’s “treasure casket”.
Above. Barbara Paganin -
Open Memory n.24, 2011-2013.
photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati
Barbara Paganin – Open Memory. Every brooch tells a story,
which can be imagined differently by every observer, adapting it to his own
memory. There is no single key to interpret it, but instead a different one for
every “reader” of this album of memories composed chapter by chapter. The
twenty-five works are planned as a single corpus, on which Paganin has worked
continuously over the past two years, and are designed to be displayed all
together for the first time at Palazzo Fortuny.
Above. Barbara Paganin -
Open Memory, 2011-2013.
Curator of the Open Memory exhibition Valeria
Accornero.
