Palazzo Giustian Lolin – Fondazione Ugo e Olga
Levi
Corrado Balest – 1923-2016
In the beautiful rooms
of the Palazzo
Giustian Lolin, seat of the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, overlooking the Canal Grande, the retrospective exhibition Corrado Balest – 1923-2016, curated by Cristina
Beltrami, Martina Massaro and Chiara Romanelli,
is on until March 24. Through a selection of over seventy works including paintings,
sculptures and ceramics from public and private collections, the exhibition
reconstructs Balest's career, from the first figurative beginnings up to his
last works of a predominantly abstract imprint.
Corrado
Balest – La Terrazza
- 1971
The Painter’s Studio
Photograph courtesy Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi
Corrado
Balest – Ritratto di Giovanna – 1977
Through
the lens of an original classicism, Corrado
Balest, a humanist, interpreted the culture of the Twentieth Century, in which he sinks his roots. The exhibition reconstructs his career, from his
figurative debut, established by his first solo show at Bevilacqua La Masa in 1950, until his last abstract works, which takes into account the dialogue with sculpture and ceramics. The exhibition
opens with Ritratto di Giovanna: not
only a tribute to an indispensable bond, but also a link to his pictorial
language. It is a sort of junction between his oils and his figurative works of
the 1950s and the dissolutions in the wide monochrome backgrounds of his
mature phase.
Photograph courtesy Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi
Corrado Balest
Venice - 1960s
In the exhibition catalogue, Corrado Balest - (1923-2016), published
by Marsilio, the Belluno born, Venetian by adoption artist’s singular artistic story, intertwines
the narration of the - life path of the man - with the evolution of his
pictorial language: from his figurative works referable to 1950-1960s in
Venice, to a progressive Abstractionism
that never becomes extreme, yet, never completely betrays the figure. At the
end of the seventies he developed a personal pictorial alphabet that takes into
account Nicolas De Stael, Rothko and
Matisse, as well as the landscapes
and culture of the Mediterranean.
Corrado
Balest – Autoritratto – 1947
Corrado
Balest – Ritratto della Madre – Ines Pagnacco - 1947c.
Corrado Balest
Sterlizia
– 1974
La Muse –
Villa Sagredo –
1974 - Il Divano – Villa Sagredo –
1974
La
Pittura Prende la Forma
Convivio
Corrado
Balest – Stanza per La Musica - 1995
A section of the
exhibition is dedicated to the specific relationship between the paintings of Balest and the themes of muses, of poetry
and of music. Music is sometimes the direct subject, when harps, lecterns,
mythological musicians appear and it is also in the abstract experimentations
of the nineties that Balest entitles, not by chance, motets, using a lexicon
that openly underlines the relationship between form and color - in another
words - rhythm.
Corrado Balest
Musicista
Arcaico –
1999
Spiraglio
– Motetto -1985
Il Musicista – Ritratto di Lorenzo – 1981
Cristina
Beltrami
Co-Curator with Martina Massaro and Chiara Romanelli
Corrado
Balest - Zattere – Venezia - 1952