Friday, May 05, 2023

Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore – Fondazione Giorgio Cini – Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation


Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore - Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Le Stanze della Fotografia
Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation
Inaugural Opening

A stone's throw from the Piazza San Marco on the magical island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which boasts not only a Palladian Basilica and cloister, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Le Stanze del Vetro and during this year's International Architectural Biennale the Pavilion of The Holy See - And Now - the new photographic exhibition and research center Le Stanze della Fotografia - formerly La Casa dei Tre Oci on the Isola della Giudecca in Venice - a joint venture between Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini.  The inaugural exhibition - Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation - until August 6 - has been realized with Archivio Mulas - and curated by Denis Curtis, the Stanze's artistic director and Alberto Salvadori, director of the Mulas Archives.


The exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the photographer's death.  More than 300 images, including 30 photographs never displayed are on show together with documents, books, publications and films, which offer a summary that opens up to the different experiences faced by Ugo Mulas (Pozzolengo-1928-Milano1973) a photographer transversal to all the then pre-established genres and capable of investigating different themes, always seeking the depth of - Human Quantity.  The exhibition winds it way through 14 sections in all his fields of interest.  From theater to fashion, portraits of friends and personalities - from literature, cinema, Art and architecture, and from landscapes and cities to his experiences with the Venice Biennale and with artists of the Pop Art movement.


The Curators
Denis Curtis and Alberto Salvadori



Self-Portrait with Nini. For Melina and Valentina - 1972
For Marcel Duchamp - 1970


"A series from the first years of my activity, taken at the
Bar Jamaica
and I, think that it establishes an important moment from those years. 
Friends and artists in that place who met and created a subtle plot, 
where I found myself thinking and working more and more 
as time passed."

Mulas was among the most import figures in post-WWII international photography, as self-taught he soon understood that being a photographer meant providing a critical testimony of society, and it was precisely this awareness that guided his first reportage between 1953-1954: the Milanese periphery and the artistic and cultural environment of the famous Bar Jamaica in the early 1950s.  Mulas quickly established himself in the various spheres of photography, from fashion to advertising, publishing in numerous magazine such as Settimo Giorno, Rivista Pirelli, Domus and Vogue.

Lina Mainini, Alfa Castaldi, Arturo Carmassi and Cesare Peverelli 
Bar Jamaica - Milano - 1953-1954


Giovanni Bazoli, Emanuela Bassetti, Michele Bugliesi 
Renato Brunetta


In the summer of 1964, U.S. Pop Art was introduced to the European public at the Venice Biennale where Mulas obtained the collaboration of critic Alan Solomon and the support of art dealer Leo Castelli, who introduced him into the artistic panorama during his first trip to the United States.  He was thus able to portray important painters at work, including Frank Stella, Lichenstein, Johns and Rauschenberg, and important figures such as Andy Warhol and John Cage.  The collaboration with the Americans was to continue in 1965 and subsequently in 1967, the year which he presented his analysis of work with the artists, publishing the famous volume New York: Art and People.
New York - 1964


Luca De Michelis
The New York Period - 1964 - Artists and Artist's Studios


Alexander Calder - 1971 - Renato Guttuso - 1961 - Giorgio de Chirico -1968
Emilio Vedova - 1962 - Arnaldo Pomodoro -1970 - Mario Schifano -1966

Ugo Mulas. Titolo foto © Eredi Ugo Mulas. Tutti i diritti riservati - Courtesy Archivio Ugo Mulas, Milano – Galleria Lia Rumma, Milano / Napoli

"In 1970 I began taking a series of photographs the subject of which
 was photography itself, an attempt at an analysis of the 
photographic process in order to identify its underlying elements and their intrinsic value...I called the series of photographs 
Verifications, because the goal was to help me understand the meaning of the processes that for years 
I had repeated one hundred times a day, without ever stopping to consider them as things in themselves, stripped of their practical function."

Le Verifiche - The Verifications - 1962-1972, are a series of 13 photographic works through which Mulas discusses photography itself, devoted to the formal and conceptual analysis of the photograph.  The title of the Venetian exhibition - Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation - draws inspiration precisely from one of the Verifiche and condenses the photographer's extraordinary reflections.

A Lab. One Hand Develops, the Other Fixes. 
For John Frederick William Herschel - 1970-1972


Novella Benzoni and Renata Codello


The Daughters
Valentina and Melina Mulas with co-curator Alberto Salvadori


Lucio Fontana - Cernobbio - 1968


Lucio Fontana - L'Attesa - Milano - 1964


Luca Massimo Barbero, Bianca and Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga


Roberto De Feo


Alberto Giacometti - XXXI Biennale Internazionale d'Arte - Venezia -1962


Set Design for Turn of the Screw - 1969


Giulio Manieri Elia, Paola Marini and Paolo De Benedictis


Giovanna Alliata di Montereale, Daniela Ferretti and Luca Massimo Barbero


Michelangelo Pistoletto's Room - Vitalita' del Negativo Nell'Arte Italiana  
Palazzo delle Esposizioni - Roma - 1970
Gilberto Zorio's Room - Vitalita' del Negativo Nell'Arte Italiana  
Palazzo delle Esposizioni - Roma - 1970


Ugo Mulas and Mina - 1970


The Grandsons
Ugo Dalla Porta and Rocco Carrieri


 The Aperitivo
Bitter - Aperitivo
Nardini






































 

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Venice - Palazzo Contarini Polignac - Magazzino Gallery - Sigrid Gloerfeldt - Exhibition - Party Photos


  Palazzo Contarini Polignac - Magazzino Gallery 
Sigrid Gloerfeldt 

At the Magazzino Gallery of Palazzo Contrarini Polignac on the Canal Grande the colorful paintings of Sigrid Gloerfeldt are on show until April 27. Sigrid Gloerfeldt is an abstract painter who was first discovered by the famous Rodolphe Stadler Gallery in Paris she  has exhibited in galleries, museums and venues around the world.


Immortality
"Complex landscape, contrasted to extreme, of light and shadow, haunted by memory, conscious but most likely unconscious, this irresistible attraction since the dawn of time, love and more - a Northern fascination with the South."
Evangeline Hersaint



Richard Makin-Poole, Melba Ruffo, Alessandra
and Alessandro Zoppi


Maria Novella dei Carraresi


Olga Spanio di Spilimbergo, Beatrice Racine and Adele Re Rebaudengo


"From the land of mist, pristine whiteness, shattered here and there by flashes of blue, grey and pink; intangible continent, shifting, elusive and clear, populated by ghostly shadows, heavy snow skies, the painful and brittle cold, who, one day at dawn every day, dreams of a wonderful elsewhere."


Jane Rushton and Josefina Alzetta


Pamela Berry, Morella Morelli and Alessandra Pianon


Grazina Subelyte, Sigrid Gloerfeldt and Karole Vail


"While sitting at the edge of an ocean of foam listening to the immemorial silence, she closes her eyes. Arises the dream. The sun, which sprays the wards, the heat, the humidity, the smells of spices and musk, dust dotted with gold, the color of days, the color of nights…"


Valerie Lepore and Morella Morelli


Sigrid Gloerfeldt and Bikem Ibrahimoglu de Montebello


Andrea Maggio and Tuffi


Alessandra Cardazzi, Valerie Lepore and Seraphine


Zoe Vayssierres, Josefina Alzetta and Caterina Pensa


"This ancestral dream… Sigrid Gloerfeldt is now the messenger. She is the heiress of this immemorial fantasy. Moreover her land is not. It is in her, to the depths of her soul, her being. She wears her world and with her brushes and her words, creates and shares it, fog and wind, landscape with heady scents.
How to create a world of fire and ice without self destruction. That is Sigrid Gloerfeldt’s quest, baladin and poetry of the abyss."

Evangeline Hersaint


Filippo Trevisanello


Barbara Luisi, Alessandro Tusset and Maria Grazia Rosin


Valentina Marangoni and Chica


Nadine Gandy and Andrew Huston


Nadja Romaine


Piero Marchesi and Carlo Nuvolari


Susanna Tribo and Fleur


  Palazzo Contarini Polignac - Magazzino Gallery 
Sigrid Gloerfeldt 



















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Thursday, March 23, 2023

Possagno - Museo e Gypsotheca Antonio Canova - Canova e Potere - La Collezione Giovanni Battista Sommariva



Possagno - Museo e Gypsotheca Antonio Canova
Canova e Potere - La Collezione Giovanni Battista Sommariva

In the charming hillside town of Possagno, northwest of Venice, home to Antonio Canova, now the Museo e Gypsotheca Antonio Canova, the exhibition Canova e Potere - La Collezione Giovanni Battista Sommariva – until September 3 – was conceived by Vittorio Sgarbi and is co-curated by Elena Catra and Moira Mascotto, director of the museum.  Canova and Power - The Collection of Giovanni Battista Sommariva exhibition pays homage to the great maestro by reconstructing the prestigious relationships that the artist had with the greatest exponents of the political and the cultural panorama of the time, highlighting the indissoluble bond existing between art and power. Sought after and admired on an international scale, Canova had in fact as clients the most influential personalities of contemporary Europe: sovereigns, popes and nobles from the various European courts up to the United States of America.

Antonio Canova - Discobolo – Palamede - 1796

Pietro Bettelini – Giovan Battista Wicar – Palamede – fronte – 1804



 Co-curator Elena Catra

Thomas Lawrence - Portrait Antonio Canova - Possagno 1815 - Venice1819


The exhibition investigates for the first time the complex figure of Giovanni Battista Sommariva and his precious collection which included nine works, five of which are important marbles, by Canova himself as well as those by Francesco Hayez, Bertel Thorvaldsen and Pierre Paul Prud'hon, some of which are exceptionally gathered here for the occasion.

 

Andrea Appiani – Portrait of Giovanni Battista Sommariva – 1813




 Antonio Canova – Maddalena Penitente – 1795

Antonio Canova Maddalena Penitente - 1798-1799



Louis-Leopold Boilly  

Napoleon Granting the Legion d’Honneur to the Sculpture Pierre Cartellier at the Salon of 1808 – 1808



“I have favorably positioned your little Apollo in a salon in the form of a gallery which I have in my residence in Paris and where I have also placed my most beautiful paintings.”

Giovanni Battista Sommariva

Collector

 

Extraordinary is also the presence of the marble work depicting the Apollino, from the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte of Bologna, exhibited for the first time to the public in all its renewed beauty after the restoration supported by the Canova Museum and carried out by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze. The paintings and sculptures from public and private collections, both national and international, also give prestige to the exhibition.


Antonio Canova – Apollino - 1797



Moira Mascotto

Co-curator and Director of the Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova




Antonio Canova – Amore e Psiche che si Abbracciano - 1787c.
Domenico Pellegrini – Ritratto di Filippo e Costanza De Marinis 
come Amore e Psiche – 1790


Alessandro Papafava – Lettere di Alessandro Papafava a Francesco Papafava – 24 marzo e 8 maggio – 1804


Francesca Papafava dei Carraresi 
and Marcello Zannoni


Pompeo Calvi – L’interno dello studio di Canova a Roma – 1880


Bartolomeo Paoletti – Cofanetto con 34 cammei in gesso opera di

Bertel Thorvaldsen e Antonio Canova – 1820-1830c.



Paolo Mariuz, Vittorio Sgarbi - President of the Museo e Gypsotheca Antonio Canova - and Amerigo Restucci



 Lunch Al Fresco
After the press preview, on the first day of Spring and on a beautifully sunny day lunch was served in the garden under a Pine tree, brought from Rome by Canova himself over two hundred years ago.


Filippo Canal, Martina Massaro, Roberto De Feo 

Paolo Mariuz



Paola Bonifacio and Fabio Zonta



The Cat’s Whiskers

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