Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Venezia – Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore - Le Stanze del Vetro – Fulvio Bianconi at Venini Exhibition

 
Venezia – Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore - Le Stanze del Vetro – Fulvio Bianconi at Venini Exhibition. The exhibition, curated by Marino Barovier, until January 10th, at the Stanze del Vetro, shows over 300 works of the innovative graphic designer, illustrator, caricaturist, Fulvio Bianconi, one of the most prolific artists to work with famous glassworks during the Fifties, he designed pieces that would become true icons of Murano artistic glassmaking.
Above. Fazzoletto Vases – 1949-1950. The famous handkerchief vases was the result of the personal and direct exchange of views between Bianconi and Paolo Venini and pieces were soon acquired by museums of decorative arts  as fine example of Murano artistic glassmaking.



Fulvio Bianconi at Venini. Marino Barovier curator of the exhibition, it is his fourth exhibition dedicated to the history of the Venini glassware company, organized by Le Stanze del Vetro, a long-term cultural initiative launched by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Stiftung devoted to the study and the promotion of the art of glassmaking in the 20th and 21st centuries.


  Photograph courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro




Fulvio Bianconi - African Women - black glass and glass with polychrome murrine (hot-worked mosaic) - 1954

 


Director of the Scientific Commission of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Luca Massimo Barbero and Pasquale Gagliardi, secretary general , Fondazione Giorgio Cini


Pentagram Stiftung’s David Landau






Fulvio Bianconi at Venini – Fasce di Colore - bands of colors – 1953. Bianconi focused on pieces with sophisticated shapes, characterized by strong colors, designing striking works, some of which sum up the enthusiasm of the “fabulous” Fifties, and later became true icons of Murano glassmaking.


Fulvio Bianconi at Venini – Forati or Buchi – holed or with holes – 1951-1952. In designing this series Bianconi tackled the theme of the “vase with a hole”, inspired by Henry Moore. 

Photograph courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro





Fulvio Bianconi - Zebra with Monkey - opaque poly-chrome glass 1948-49
 

 





Fulvio Bianconi – With applied Tesserae and Pezzati – 1950-1954
 






 
Fulvio Bianconi at Venini – A Macchie – with patches – 1950. Among the subjects are also the master glass-makers themselves depicted with blow pipe, perhaps the artist’s homage to the makers of his glass pieces.

 




Fulvio Bianconi at Venini – Mermaids, Decoro a Rete, Nudes – 1950. During this period Bianconi produced a series of artifacts of a figurative kind, some dealing with marine subjects (mermaids and fish) and others developing the theme of the female body. Many of these pieces are characterized by a technique consisting of an applied netting of lattimo threads.


  Fulvio Bianconi – Nudes – 1950

 


Filmmaker, Gianluigi Calderone who directed the documentary, La Commedia dell’Arte di Fulvio Bianconi



Fulvio Bianconi at Venini - Commedia dell’Arte – 1948.  The figurines of the Commedia del Arte, Italian popular theater are one of Bianconi’s most characteristic productions for Venini. Returning to the Murano tradition of figurines, which had been particularly fashionable in the 1930s, the artist proposed a playful and iconic re-interpretation, dealing in a quasi-caricatural spirit with the theme of the maschere (stock characters of Italian popular theatre), which at the time had been a popular theme in artistic circles.


Fulvio Bianconi at Venini
 





 

 


Friday, October 23, 2015

Possagno – Asolo and Crespano del Grappa: Venere Nelle Terre di Antonio Canova – Exhibitions


photograph by manfredi bellati

Venus is the Absolute Star

Possagno – Asolo and Crespano del Grappa: Venere Nelle Terre di Antonio Canova – Exhibitions. Three exhibitions, entitled Venus in the Land of Antonio Canova, until April 24, 2016, in three different small towns in the Treviso foothills, Possagno, Asolo and Crespano del Grappa pay homage to the figure of Venus, as depicted by greatest neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, in honor of the loan of Antonio Canova’s Leeds Venus.  The magnificent marble sculpture of Venus emerging from the bath, arrived directly from Leeds in Great Britain, it was sculpted for an English nobleman in 1817-20, and is placed in Canova’s home, now the Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova in Possagno. It majestically takes final stage of the exhibition that coils within the museum, where the visitor can admire and examine all the “Venuses” that Canova sculpted, from the Le Grazie, (see below) the Dancers, Dirce, Najade and Pauline, as well as, his plaster casts, and  the original models that Canova produced before carving, his paintings and his memorabilia.
Above. Antonio Canova – Leeds Venus – 1817-20 – marble – Leeds City Art Museum.





 
Possagno: Venere nelle Terre di Antonio Canova. In front of the Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova, Franca Coin, President of the Fondazione Canova, together with the three mayors of Possagno, Asolo and Crespano del Grappa, welcome guests at the opening of the exhibition Venus in the land of Antonio Canova. “For this occasion, we wanted to represent all three locations of this magnificent region, which boasts the creation of the works of the sculptor, the locations are all “dressed up” to create an art itinerary to intrigue visitors; both for the works that are on show and for the places that are home to the three exhibitions, of this ideal path of art: Asolo, Possagno and Crespano del Grappa. These three small-town gems are set in an environment, the Asolo and the Monte Grappa foothills, of which the charm and  the beauty are often poignant. " Franca Coin stated.
Above. Franca Coin and the mayors of Asolo, Possagno and Crespano del Grappa, in the background the Tempio Canoviano.



Museo and Gipsoteca Antonio Canova.  In the square, in front of the museum, “drawn” in the cobblestones, is the plan of the Tempio Canoviano, above, designed by architect Toni Follina





Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova. The museum of Antonio Canova is lodged in his birth-house, where a complete view of his art and his life can be admired. Here his memory is preserved thanks to his stepbrother Giovanni Battista Sartori. Today, this museum, collects almost all his plaster cast models, his terracotta scale models, drawings and paintings, they constitutes a necessary reference point for all the museums of the world that jealously preserve his marble masterpieces.
Above. Antonio Canova – Paolina Borghese Bonaparte – 1804-08 – plaster cast.



 

Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova.   Antonio Canova - Le Grazie – 1813 – plaster cast – original model – metallic points sculpture in marble – 1812-1816 – St. Petersburg  - Hermitage.
Note. The famous Canova "dots" on the plasters are the immediate tacks (Repere), units of measurement, necessary for the work, of the famous sculptor, to be translated from plaster cast sculpture into marble.


  Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova

Senator Patrizia Bisinella, Gianni De Paoli, mayor of Possagno, Franca Coin, president Fondazione Canova and Venice International Foundation, Marco Baratto, deputy mayor of Crespano del Grappa, Paolo Carollo, president Lascito Fondazione Canova, Mauro Migliorini, mayor of Asolo, Mario Guderzo, director of the Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova.

 
Andrea Bellieni – director of the Correr Museum in Venice

Note: In The Museo Correr in Piazza San Marco, Venice, The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, in collaboration with the support of Venice International Foundation,  Friends of Venice Italy and the Comite Français pour la Sauvegarde de Venise, presented the “Sublime Canova” project, aimed at the restoration of the precious section dedicated to Antonio Canova in the museum, with the intent to allow full enjoyment of Beauty, Harmony and Purity emanating from the works of Antonio Canova.


 
In the foreground Antonio Canova - Marie-Louise – 1809 - plaster cast – original model – lose mould with pencil markings

 
  How Canova Worked – life-size plaster cast


Franca Coin president of the Fondazione Canova and Mario Guderzo, director of the Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova

Around the fabulous Leeds Marble on loan to the museum, Mario Guderzo, director of the Gipsoteca, has created a real show-path, offering the many testimonies that Antonio Canova left around the theme of Venus and, more generally, of the female nude. "The theme of beauty is inherent to Canova says Guderzo. There is never anything vulgar in the bodies, whether they are young women or young male bodies; they are portrayed with equal passion. Canova loved beauty and transferred it into perfect shapes staying true to real form.”

   
Marco Ceresa and Marco Arosio 



  Lucio Pollo

 

Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova.   Antonio Canova – Funeral Monument to Marie-Christine of Austria – 1799-1800 – plaster cast – bas-relief and figures – metallic points.  Sculpture in marble – Vienna – 1798-1805 – Augustinian Church.

 
Pinotto and Fiora Marelli


Piergiorgio Coin

 
Antonio Canova - Terracotta Models


Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova – Antonio Canova 
Figures in Movement 
mixed media 



 
  Fabio Zonta
Photographer of the beautiful catalogue
Venere Nelle Terre di Canova

 
Francesco and Crista Casarin

 
Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova Canova’s noble vestments  


  How Canova Worked – life-size plaster cast


Museo e Gipsoteca Antonio Canova




Asolo – Museo Civico - Venere nelle Terre di Antonio CanovaThe cutting of the ribbon at the Museo Civico in Asolo, Franca Coin, president of the Fondazione Canova with the mayors of Possagno, Asolo and Crespano del Grappa the three towns, hosting the Venus in the Land of Canova exhibitions, until April 24, 2016 and closely associated in the life of Antonio Canova