Possagno: Possagno - Gysotheca e Museo Antonio Canova - Canova George Washington

photograph by Fabio Zonta - courtesy Fondazione Canova Onlus 

Possagno - Gysotheca e Museo Antonio Canova  

Canova I George Washington

Directly from New York, after being on show at The Frick Collection, the exhibition Canova George Washington arrives at the Gysotheca e Museo Antonio Canova in Possagno, until April 28, and is curated by Mario Guderzo in collaboration with Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection. The exhibition was organized jointly by both museums to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Antonio Canova's production of the model for the monument of the First American President  and therefore thus honoring the great Italian sculptor, first ambassador for Italian art in America. 

Antonio Canova - George Washington - Modello - 1818
plaster
http://www.frick.org

http://www.museocanova.it/  

Curators

 Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection 

Mario Guderzo director of the Gysotheca e Museo Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova - George Washington - Bossetto - 1817

plaster  

In 1816, the North Carolina State House in Raleigh commissioned a full-length statue of George Washington to stand in the hall of the State Senate. Thomas Jefferson, believing that no American sculptor was up to the task, recommended Antonio Canova (1757–1822), then one of Europe’s most celebrated artists. The first and only work Canova created for America, the statue depicted the nation’s first president in ancient Roman garb, per Jefferson’s urging, drafting his farewell address to the states. It was unveiled to great acclaim in 1821, and people traveled from far and wide to see it. Tragically, only a decade later, a fire swept through the State House, reducing the statue to just a few charred fragments.The exhibition in Possagno traces the history of the lost masterpiece, probably the least known public monument among those performed by Canova. For the first time, the full-scale plaster preparatory model, four preparatory models, the related drawings and the translation engravings are seen together. 

  
Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection and Armando Varricchio, Italian Ambassador to Washington

 Sir Thomas Lawrence - Antonio Canova - portrait -1815–19
oil on canvas

Canova by Fabio Zonta 
Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova

Also on show the  photographic exhibition Canova by Fabio Zonta which was previously presented at the Italian Consulate in New York, it hosts giant format photographs of the works from the Gypsotheca di Possagno including some interpretations of George Washington's sculptures.

Fabio Zonta

Photographer Fabio Zonta, has collaborated with major architectural and design magazines and in the realization of various films on architecture. From his first exhibition in 2003 he has focused on the photographic interpretation of nature and still life.

 Fabio Zonta - Canova photographs 

  
Romano Vio - New Canova
Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova 

A seperate exhibition documents the restoration of Canova's sculptures by Romano Vio (1913 - 1984), sculptor and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Venice.   Thanks to his skill as a modeler he was commissioned by the Superintendency to produce the new model of the George Washington sculpture from the work preserved in Possagno, which he sculpted in Pietrasanta marble in 1970, the monument is now exposed in Raleigh, North Carolina to replace that of Canova destroyed in 1831.

Possagno - Gysotheca e Museo Antonio Canova  

The Opening Ceremony

photograph by Fabio Zonta - courtesy Fondazione Canova Onlus 

Canova by Fabio Zonta  

 

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Milano: Fondazione Carriero - Giulio Paolini - Del bello Ideale

“The work exists even before the intervention of the artist, who is the first to contemplate it.”

Giulio Paolini

Fondazione Carriero 

Giulio Paolini - del Bello Ideale 

The exhibition del Bello Ideale, until February 10, at the Fondazione Carriero,  investigates and explores Conceptual Art by analyzing the work of Giulio Paolini, an unchallenged pioneer in Italy, through an impressive selection of works, chosen and installed with the Turin-based artist which covers his entire fifty-seven year career by displaying masterpieces, some of his famous self-portraits, as well as, three new site-specific works. The exhibition is curated by Francesco Stocchi,  with interventions by the stage designer Margherita Palli. There are three theme groups that have been singled-out in the itinerary, they are presented individually, one for each level of the Fondazione, while maintaining a mutual and constant dialogue with each other. 

Giulio Paolini - Cariatide - 1984

President of the scientific committee of Fondazione Carriero, Ennio and Giorgio Brion

https://fondazionecarriero.org/en/  

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait  

Giorgio De Chirico - Se Ipsum - 1948

Scenography - Margherita Palli

The setting evokes Paolini's studio observed through holes present along a wooden wall that surround the space, typical of Renaissance studioli, which inspired this scenery.  Amidst shelves with books and rolled up drawings, on an easel the work Se Ipsum, Giorgio De Chirico's self-portrait. For Paolini, this artist was the first to take a lateral and critical approach to artist creation.

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait - The Author is Absent

In Cielo - 2018
Controfigura - critica del punto di vista - 1981

On the ground floor the installation revolves around the theme of the Portrait and Self-portrait, a veritable topos of Western Art history and focuses on the practice of Paolini, who since the 1960s was intimately engaged in analyzing this topic, refining it to the point of withdrawing his presence from his own works. 

 Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Giulio Paolini - Autoritratto - 1970

 copyright Giulio Paolini - photo by Adam Reich - courtesy Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini - Torino

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Giulio Paolini - Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est ? - 1969-70

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Ritratto dell'artista come modello - 1980

Deposizione - 2018

curator Francesco Stocchi and stage designer Margherita Palli
Monogramma - 1965

 photo by Agostino Osio - installation view at Fondazione Carriero - Milan -  courtesy Fondazione Carriero 

First Floor - On the Surface - Line, Perspective, Horizon, Tautology ...

Scenography  - Margherita Palli

The installation evocatively recreates an image taken from The Book of Perspective (1604-1605) by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-1607), a Flemish architect and painter known for his studies on perspectives and numerous architecture engravings.  The treatise on perspective is a key reference text in Giulio Paolini's work.

First Floor - On the Surface
Senza Titolo - 1964

Necessaire - 1968

The section on the first floor is titled On the Surface and develops Paolini’s relationship with the theme of perspective in all its forms, from an exploration of lines to the symbology of horizons up to the use of mirroring, tautology, and repetition as tools for analyzing space and time.

  

First Floor - On the Surface
Senza titolo - 1963

 Photo Matteo Piazza - courtesy Fondazione Carriero -  Lara Facco PandC

Giulio Paolini - 1995

First Floor - On the Surface
Finis Terrae - 2018

 

First Floor - On the Surface

Indice delle opere inscritto in un motivo decorativo - 1972

Idem IV (regesto delle opere come motivo a figure geometriche sparse) - 1974

 photo by Agostino Osio - installation view at Fondazione Carriero - Milan -  courtesy Fondazione Carriero

Second floor - One of Two - Mythical and Classical

Finally, the Rococo hall on the second floor hosts One of Two, which presents a selection of works that explore the relationship between Myth and Classicism in Paolini’s artistic universe: emblems of an ideal beauty that, in polarizing gazes with its harmony, creates a seemingly unbridgeable distance between the work of art and the viewer.

 Second floor - One of Two
Mimesi - 1975

Second floor - One of Two
Saffo - 1968

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