Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Venice: Spring at Palazzo Fortuny – The Zurich Room – An Italian Collection

 
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.




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


Mariella Gnani
conservator of the Merlini Collection and art restorer
 

  photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

Lucio Fontana – paintings
Adolfo WidltLa 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

 
Cesare Peverelli – Senza Titolo – 1957 - oil on canvas
Roberto Crippa – Spirali - 1952 – oil on canvas
Roberto Crippa – Spirali - 1951 – oil on canvas
Enrico Baj – Bambini– 1955 – oil and collage on canvas


Vincenzo Gemito - busts - 1874-1878 – terracotta
Claudio Parmiggiani – Senza Titolo – 2008 –
fire, smoke and soot on panel

  photograph and copyright Manfredi Bellati

The Press Preview
Giorgia Pea, cultural attache, Daniela Ferretti (standing), curator and director of Palazzo Fortuny and Zoran’s niece Vanda Music



Bertozzi and Casoni – Composizione n.17 – 2014
polychrome ceramic



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