Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Venice - Palazzo Fortuny – Winter at Palazzo Fortuny

  Photograph by Sarah Moon – courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

 Venice - Palazzo Fortuny – Winter at Palazzo Fortuny


Venice - Palazzo Fortuny – Winter at Palazzo Fortuny. Four Women, four incredible personalities and four great exhibitions are on show - until March 13 - Winter at Palazzo Fortuny; Henrietta Fortuny, Romaine Brooks, Sarah Moon and Ida Barbarigo.
Above. Sarah Moon - Omaggio a Mariano Fortuny - silver salt print, cm 111x141.




Palazzo Fortuny – Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Henriette Fortuny. The exhibition pays tribute to a woman who, by her intelligence and sensitivity, succeeded in supporting and inspiring one of the most refined artists of the past century. At the beginning of the 20th Century in Paris, French born Henriette met Mariano Fortuny, an already a well-known artist, involved in experimenting with a complex system of lighting that from its early application would revolutionize stage lighting in the theater. And, for no less than 47 years, Henriette would be at Fortuny’s side, contributing in a decisive manner to the success of his splendid textile creations.
Above.  Manifattura Fortuny - Delphos dress with over garment c. 1920. Photograph of Henriette - Mariano Fortuny – c.1905.



  Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Henriette Fortuny. Henriette was, for instance, responsible for the idea of the Delphos, the fine plisse silk gown that became a worldwide icon of style and the symbol of a timeless elegance.


Mariano Fortuny - Modella con abito Delphos 
 c.1920 - Lastra di vetro alla gelatina, 120 x 90 mm - Archivio Museo Fortuny, inv. MFN02173 - ©Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia - Museo Fortuny.
Manifattura Fortuny -  Abito Delphos
dopo il 1909 - Taffeta di seta plisse, alt. 146 cm - Collezioni Museo Fortuny, inv. C016 - ©Paolo Utimpergher


Co-Curators of the exhibition. Cristina Da Roit and Daniela Ferretti, who is also the director of the Museum of Palazzo Fortuny.  The exhibition is the result of the research, re-ordering and maintenance undertaken during the course of 2015 in the collections of Museo Fortuny.

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Henriette Fortuny. In the house and workshop of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, Henriette worked alongside her husband in the creation of fine printed fabrics and silk lampshades, coordinating the work of the craftsmen they employed. It was she who maintained the delicate relations with an increasingly numerous and international clientele, leaving Fortuny to dedicate himself to his studies, research and experiments in various artistic disciplines.
 Delphos dress with over garment in printed silk organza
Collezioni di Museo Fortuny - inv. C016 e C29


Henriette and Mariano Fortuny

Henriette, photographed by Mariano in her work clothes and Mariano Fortuny, photographed by Henriette in his work shirt both in Venice, Palazzo Pesaro Orfei c.1920

 

Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Henriette Fortuny 
Fortuny block print on silk velvet fabric c. 1920

 

Mariano Fortuny’s Travel Photographs - Egypt 1938

Courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Mariano Fortuny - Henriette

Photographed in the garden of their home in Paris, Boulevard Berthier 1903-04
Pellicola in celluloide, 120 x 90 mm - Archivio Museo Fortuny, inv. MFN05712 - ©Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia - Museo Fortuny

Painting - c. 1915
Tempera su cartone, 50,5 x 34 cm - Museo Fortuny, inv. FORT0110 - ©Claudio Franzini per Museo Fortuny



Photograph courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Sarah Moon – A Tribute to Mariano Fortuny. The highly personal and visionary style of Sarah Moon, the intensity of her gaze and the poetry of her photographs could find no more enchanting and empathetic space in which to be displayed than Palazzo Fortuny. The soft lights of the lagoon in winter that penetrate through the large windows, the folds, the swirls and reflections created by the fabrics and drapes of the clothes designed by Mariano Fortuny, are a source of inspiration for this new exhibition, curated by Alexandra de Leal and Adele Re Rebaudengo, which the great photographer has built up over the years during her frequent visits to the house/workshop of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei.
Above. Sarah Moon - A Tribute to Mariano Fortuny – silver salt print.


  photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati



Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Sarah Moon – A Tribute to Mariano Fortuny. Sarah Moon is one of the major photographers of contemporary fashion, and the first woman in 1972 to take photos for the Pirelli calendar, the French artist has for many years expanded the horizons of her focus, with a particular interest in three themes: the evanescence of beauty, uncertainty and the passage of time.

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny 

Sarah Moon – A Tribute to Mariano Fortuny


 Winter at Palazzo Fortuny - Sarah Moon – A Tribute to Mariano Fortuny. The inkjet and silver salts prints tell fragments of an inner story, which takes shape in the shadows created by the movement of the fabrics recalling the softness of the pleats of the Delphos, the iconic dress made by Fortuny, and in the lines – blurred by memory – of the palazzo’s architecture.

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks – Paintings, Drawings, Photographs. With this exhibition, the first ever in Italy to be dedicated to the American artist Romaine Brooks, we discover the non-conformist, refined and cosmopolitan community that animated the most sophisticated cultural circles of the Belle Epoque in Paris, Capri and Venice: Jean Cocteau, Paul Morand, Luisa Casati, Ida Rubinstein and Gabriele d’Annunzio are just some of the characters who were privileged to be immortalized by the artist, famous for her palette of moonlight tones.
Above. Paintings by Romaine Brooks:  Self-portrait with Veil c.1905 -  By the Seashore  1914 -  Self-portrait c.1912.

 
 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks – Paintings, Drawings, Photographs.  Romaine Brooks was born in Rome in 1874 to American parents and married to pianist John Ellington Brooks, Beatrice Romaine Goddard was one of the most interesting figures of the artistic scene of the Twenties. Romantically linked to the writer Nathalie Clifford Barney and, simultaneously, to the dancer Ida Rubinstein – her model for many paintings -– the American artist also had an intense relationship with d’Annunzio, whom she immortalized in two famous portraits.
Above. Romaine Brooks – Self-portrait c. 1900-1905 – charcoal and white lead on grey paper. 


 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks

Paintings, Drawings, Photographs

Ida Rubenstein c.1914-1917
vintage prints and original negatives


Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks – Paintings, Drawings, Photographs. Romaine Brooks was initially influenced by the painting of Whistler, she soon found her unmistakable signature style, one marked by an infinite variety of greys and old pinks and an uncanny ability to capture the soul of her subjects. However, it is the drawings that are the deepest mirror of her tragic and lonely soul. Charged with a suffering poetry, emotion and mystery, irony and pessimism, these elements blend in the taut line devoid of any decorative frills that almost cuts into the paper without hesitation or second thoughts; they accompany us with modesty and apparent detachment through the meanders of an inner world, constantly poised between light and darkness.
Above. Romaine Brooks – Kidnapped c. 1930 – graphite on paper.



Photograph courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks

Paintings, Drawings, Photographs

Gabriele d’Annunzio – The Poet in Exile1912
Olio su tela, 116x 95 cm - Paris, Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art modern - ©Photo Centre Pompidou. MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

 

Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks

Paintings, Drawings, Photographs

Romaine Brooks – A study for Spring c. 1911
pencil on paper

  photograph courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Romaine Brooks - Paintings, Drawings, Photographs.  Curated by Jerome Merceron on the basis of a project by Daniela Ferretti, the exhibition arises from the felicitous meeting with Lucile Audouy, a passionate and feisty collector in Paris, who has generously loaned a very important group of works for the exhibition in Venice, many of which never before seen in public.
Above.  Romaine Brooks – Portrait Marchesa Casati c.1920 -
Olio su tela, 248 x 120 cm - Collezione Lucile Audouy -  ©Photo Thomas Hennocque

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Ida Barbarigo – Herms and Saturns. The descendant of an illustrious family of artists, present in Venice for more than three centuries, Ida Barbarigo presents a selection of works from two series made over two decades, between 1980 and the end of the 1990s, at Palazzo Fortuny, in an exhibition curated by Daniela Ferretti.
Above. Ida Barbarigo – Sfinge 1995 and Grande Sfinge 1994 – oil on canvas


 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Ida Barbarigo – Herms and Saturns. Born in Venice in 1920, her mother, Livia Tivoli, was a painter and poet, her father, the painter Guido Cadorin. Ida continues the humanist tradition of a family in which sculptors, architects, painters, scholars and writers have succeeded each other for centuries. In 1949, she married Zoran Music with whom she shared the passion for art. She lives and works in Venice.
Above. Ida Barbarigo – Self-portrait – 1981 – oil on canvas.

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Ida Barbarigo – Herms and Saturns.  The Herms and Saturns are the enigmatic witnesses of a complex development undertaken by the artist through painting. The canvas, colors, acids, brushes; punches are simple tools through which her vision takes shape, revealing itself in the material nature of the work. Seductive and enigmatic, with simplicity Ida loves to recount her constant and passionate commitment to painting, as emerges perfectly in the splendid essay by Luca Massimo Barbero published in the exhibition catalogue.
Above. Ida Barbarigo - Herms 1984 - oil on canvas.

 
Winter at Palazzo Fortuny – Ida Barbarigo – Herms and Saturns

Ida Barbarigo – Saturns 1998
Oil on canvas
 
 


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