“Tancredi, through his painting, creates a new
poetic philosophy for those who have neither telescopes nor rockets: how lucky we are to
have such crystallizations that transport us safe and sound toward other
worlds.”
Peggy Guggenheim
Venice: Peggy Guggenheim
Collection - My Weapon Against the Atom Bomb is a Blade of Grass – Tancredi - A
Retrospective. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
presents the exhibition My Weapon
Against the Atom Bomb is a Blade of Grass. Tancredi. A Retrospective,
curated by Luca Massimo Barbero,
until March 13. With over ninety works, this much-awaited
retrospective marks the return to Venice of Tancredi Parmeggiani (Feltre
1927–Rome 1964), among the most original and prolific Italian painters of the
second half of the twentieth century. Tancredi was the only artist, after
Jackson Pollock, whom Peggy Guggenheim placed under contract, promoting his
work, making it known to museums and collectors in the USA, and organizing
shows, including one in her own home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, in 1954. More
than sixty years later, with this show, Tancredi returns to the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, his reputation now beyond question, with remarkable
paintings that re-create, step by step in intimate galleries, between creative
fury and lyrical expressionism, the brief but meteoric trajectory of this great
postwar painter.
Tancredi – (Untitled) City
1954 – mixed
media on canvas
Tancredi imagined Venice from above, evoking the
atmosphere of the city in Winter, with fog filtering the light and thinning the
crowd of buildings that characterizes the urban landscape.
Tancredi – Springtime
1951 -
Gouache and crayon on paper
It is an
‘abstract universal landscape’ painted with three small dots and dabs of the
brush in manner that makes one think of flowery fields, sky and earth. This is
a prime example of Tancredi’s first Informal
style.
Tancredi – (Untitled) Balloons on
the Swamp
1953 – mixed
media on Masonite
Tancredi – (Untitled) Sojourn in Venice
1954 – Oil
on Masonite
Tancredi
depicts a lagoon-scape of pure abstraction, with a highly atmospheric
effect. Perhaps this signified his
return to a calm life in Venice, after failed attempts to establish himself in
Paris and Rome.
Tancredi – A Propos of Norwegian Atmosphere 1
1959 – Mixed
media on masonite
In 1959
Tancredi traveled to Norway with his wife Tove and discovered an entirely new
landscape beyond that of the lagoon, composed of a colder but nonetheless
intense light. It was after this trip
that colors such as green, which had rarely appeared in his work, began to take
on a dominant role.
Tancredi – Untitled
(Flowers 101% Painted by Me and by Others No.8)
1962 – Mixed
media and collage on canvas with pencil and crayon on paper
Tancredi sometimes used drawings of his own in his collages, using in particular doodles
from his Witticisms series. In this case, Tancredi applied a large square
of gauze towards the right of the canvas to create an effect of transparency
within the painting, and glued, directly below it a drawing a scene from a film
still of another reality inserted into the painting but intentionally detached
from it.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection – The interns