contessanally: Venice: Spring at Palazzo Fortuny – The Zurich Room

Spring at Palazzo Fortuny

The Zurich Room – Tribute to Zoran Music

An Italian Collection – Artworks from the Merlini Collection

The Zurich Room

A Tribute to Zoran Music

In 1949, Zoran Music (Bocavizza, 1909 – Venice, 2005) was commissioned by sisters Charlotte and Nelly Dornacher to decorate the basement of their villa in Zollikon near Zurich. The result was to be an example of a “total work of art”: in addition to creating paintings on plaster and on jute and linen canvas, the artist also designed the decorative patterns embroidered on the curtains and tablecloth that adorned the room. Several pieces of furniture, though not designed by him, were chosen on his agreement and completed the space created for holding social gatherings. The Zurich Room was recreated at Palazzo Fortuny as the central element of an exhibition and tribute to its creator, which is curated by Daniela Ferretti and on view until July 23.

http://fortuny.visitmuve.it/en/home/

The Zurich Room

A Tribute to Zoran Music

The many design motifs of an almost dizzying richness that Music created for this room, constitute a sort of iconographic compendium of artistic production in those years. In addition, there are the views of Venice: the domes and facade of the Basilica, the Palazzo Ducale, balustrades, arches, the piazza porticoes, the Basin of San Marco, San Giorgio, the Dogana and the fishing boats.

Daniela Ferretti curator and director of Palazzo Fortuny

Zoran Music

Self Portrait – 1948 – Ida – 1950

colored pencil on paper

photograph courtesy Palazzo Fortuny

Zoran Music and Ida Barbarigo

On the terrace of his studio in Palazzo Pisani

Zoran Music

Fragments of decorations from his studio in Palazzo Pisani

tempera on wall - oil on panel - 1948

Zoran Music – Studio per Cavallini– 1949

charcoal on paper

Zoran Music - Cavallino Azzuro – 1951

oil on canvas

Zoran Music – Grand Canal -1948

oil on canvas

photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

Spring at Palazzo Fortuny

An Italian Collection - Artworks from the Merlini Collection

The Merlini Collection, until July 23, is curated by Daniela Ferretti and Francesco Poli; sculptures, drawings and above all paintings, exclusively Italian Art (except for some rare exceptions), traverses the entire Twentieth Century from the earliest decades with works that date back to the founding moment of Modernism. It includes drawings by Amedeo Modigliani, paintings by Filippo de Pisis and, then, works by Adolfo Wildt, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Mario Sironi, Gino Severini, Giorgio Morandi and Massimo Campigli, up until the period of Italian Abstractionism and Arte Informale, with important works by Mario Radice, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Piero Dorazio, Giulio Turcato, Roberto Crippa, Alfredo Chighine and Piero Ruggeri.

Alberto Savinio – Apollo - 1931

tempera on canvas

http://fortuny.visitmuve.it/en/mostre-en/mostre-in-corso-en/an-italian-collection/2018/03/17665/artworks-from-merlini-collection/

Mariella Gnani

conservator of the Merlini Collection and art restorer

photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

Lucio Fontana – paintings

Adolfo Widlt – La Concezione – 1921

white Carrara marble (center)

An Italian Collection

Artworks from the Merlini Collection

The collection offers a very broad overview of twentieth-century Italian Art, and at the same time prompts a major question: what energies drive the continuing desire to collect? What kind of intellectual curiosity and which casual encounters orient choices that contribute to giving each collection its own physiognomy and the impetus that makes it accessible to the public?

photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

“Every collection is suspended between two opposing poles: order and disorder, and it is the figure of the collector that gives it meaning, far more than the objects that compose it.”

Walter Benjamin

Turi Simeti – Senza Titolo – Rosso – 2010

acrylic on shaped canvas