contessanally

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Venice - Palazzo Ducale - Apartamento del Doge - Venetia 1600 - Births and Rebirths

‘In the above-mentioned year 421, on the 25th day of March, at midday on Holy Monday, this most illustrious, exalted and most marvellous Christian City was founded, the Heavens at that time finding themselves in a most propitious disposition...’.

Chronicon Altinate

eleventh-twelfth century

Palazzo Ducale - Apartamento del Doge

Venetia 1600 - Births and Rebirths

To celebrate the 1600th anniversary of Venice the monumental exhibition - Venetia 1600 - Births and Rebirths - until March 25 - is staged in the very place that most symbolises the power and glory of the Serenissima: the Palazzo Ducale in Piazza San Marco. It is curated by Robert Echols, Frederick Illchman, Gabriele Matino and Andrea Bellieni, with the technical directorship of Gabriella Belli and a layout by Pier Luigi Pizzi. Promoted by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, the exhibition uses a sort of fabulous and surprising illustrated story through the centuries to undertake the difficult but exciting task of recounting – through more than 250 works of art, ancient artefacts and rare documents – the moments, places, monuments and personalities that have marked the history of Venice. To do this, it has chosen an unusual point of view, that of the countless moments of crisis and rupture and the equally many regenerations and renewals that have marked its existence.

Vittore Carpaccio

Leone di San Marco andante "da tera e da mar" - 1516

Venetian Sculptor

Venezia come Giustizia - 1526c.

https://palazzoducale.visitmuve.it/en/mostre-en/mostre-in-corso-en/venetia-1600-births-and-rebirths/2021/04/21207/exhibition-2/

photograph by Schneider Kreuznach - Roma, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica - courtesy FMCV -

Venetia 1600 - Births and Rebirths - exhibits fundamental steps in the history and identity of Venice, repeatedly called upon to replan its future and rethink its destiny, as witnessed by the works and documents of the greatest artists who have worked in the lagoon over almost a millennium – Carpaccio, Bellini, Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo, Rosalba Carriera, Guardi and Canaletto, through to Canova, Hayez, Appiani; and so on to Pollock, Vedova, Tancredi, Santomaso – but also many architects, talented men of art, writers and musicians who have accompanied its evolution.

Antonio Canal - Canaletto

Piazzetta San Marco con la Loggetta e la Libreria
1730-1740 - oil on canvas 69 x 92cm

co-curator Andrea Bellieni, technical director Gabriella Belli

exhibition layout by Pier Luigi Pizzi

Alberto Prosdocimi

Facciata delle Basilica di San Marco - 1881

Lazzaro Bastiani - attribuito

Annunciazione e Madonna col Bambino - trittico - 1490c.

Vittore Carpaccio

Vocazione di San Matteo - detail - 1502

photograph courtesy FMCV - Venezia, Museo Correr, Cl. I n. 2058

Joseph Heintz - il giovane
La processione del Redentore
oil on canvas 115 x 205cm - 1648-1650

Renato Cevese - curatore - Andrei Soltan - disegnatore
Ballico-Officina Modellisti SAS - realizzazione
Modello della Chiesa del Redentore - 1972
Andrea Palladio - architetto

Lazzaro Bastiani
Ritratto del Doge Francesco Foscari - 1460c.

Jacopo Negretti - detto - Palma il Giovane
Madonna col Bambino in Gloria, San Magno che incorona Venezia affiancato dalla fede - 1610-1620c.

Exhibition View
Costume and Ceremony

photograph courtesy FMCV - Venezia - Musaeo Correr

Luigi Querena
L’incendio della Scuola dei Morti a San Geremia
tempera on canvas - 104 x 165cm - 1850 post

photograph courtesy FMCV - Venezia - Palazzo Ducale

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Venezia riceve da Nettuno le Richezze del Mare
oil on canvas - 135x275 cm - 1756-1758

Exhibition View
The Capital of Exhibition Art

photograph courtesy FMCV - Proiezione a colori in alta definizione su parete in ambiente oscurato; suono surround 5.1

Bill Viola
La Zattera - Maggio 2004
video installation

Andrea Merola
Piazza San Marco - during - Acqua Alta - 12 November - 2019

Studio Azzuro
Oltre - video installation - 2021

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Thursday, November 11, 2021

Venice - Palazzo Grassi - HYPERVENEZIA

Palazzo Grassi

HYPERVENEZIA

Palazzo Grassi reopened to the public after extensive restorations with the photographic exhibition - HYPERVENEZIA - until January 9, curated by Matthieu Humery. The exhibition is specifically dedicated to the city of Venice on the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of its foundation. It presents the ambitious Venice Urban Photo Project, conceived and developed by Mario Peliti.

The Map

A sight-specific map of the city made of approximately 900 geolocalised images offers a panoramic view of Venice.

https://www.palazzograssi.it/en/exhibitions/current/hypervenezia/#body/

Mario Peliti - Rome - 1958 - studied architecture and is a publisher and gallery owner. In 2006 he starts to photograph and systematically map the city with the aim to form an archive of images that is the widest and most organic ever created and to offer a unique representation of the entire urban fabric of Venice, in its complexity and continuity. This photography archive currently amounts to 12.000 images, all in black and white, taken under the same lighting conditions, without any shadows and, most of all, in the absence of any human presence.

Mario Peliti

Santa Croce

Isola Nova del Tronchetto - 2021

San Marco

Pescaria - San Bartolomeo - 2019

Fondamenta Tragheto del Buso - 2015

A linear path of almost 400 photographs marks out an ideal trail through the sestieri – neighbourhoods – of Venice which offers the visitor a radical visual experience: the Venice we know disappears to give way to a parallel Venice, an empty and timeless one. From the Serenissima presented in its pure materiality emerges this unsettling strangeness that characterises any city that has been emptied of its inhabitants.

Dorsoduro - Giudecca

Molino Stuky - 2014

Complesso Residenziale - 2019

Complesso Residenziale - 2017

Santa Croce

Campo Santa Maria Maggiore - 2016

Santa Croce

Piazzale Roma - 2021

Castello

Arsenale - 2016

The Video Installation

A video installation of over 3.000 shots that scroll accompanied by a soundtrack composed specifically for the show by musician and composer Nicolas Godin, and a member of the electronic music duo Air.

Castello

Arsenale - 2020

Castello

Giardini della Biennale - 2020

"The resulting image of Venice is nothing like the photography books we are used to see. The viewer may find it perplexing because such an image is far from the usual cliches and way beyond the reality it shows us. Although this coincidence could not have been 'planned' by Politi when he began this adventure, the vision he offers us corresponds to that of the city under strict lockdown during the pandemic, and anticipates the appearance Venice would take on if the depopulation that has emptied it of two-thirds of it citizens in half a century keeps growing at its present rate. Hence the title Hypervenezia, which was chosen by the curator Matthieu Humery, to convey this feeling of strangeness which subverts our recognition of places we could have wandered through without really noticing them."

Bruno Racine

Director and CEO - Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana

Cannaregio

Calle del Solfarin - 2020

The project aims to revive the methodological and formal rigor of major photographic campaigns of the 19th and 20th century in order to provide a perception of Venice from the beginning of the 21st century that is as exhaustive as possible.
San Polo

Campiello de la Scuola - 2019

Castello

Giardini della Biennale - 2020

The Catalogue

The HYPERVENEZIA catalogue - Venice Urban Photo Project conceived and photographed by Mario Peliti - is published by Marsiglio and written in three languages. Designed by Sonnoli studio, it includes around 400 photographs and narrative contributions by Alain Fleischer and architect Franco Mancuso, as well as an introductory text by the curator Matthieu Humery.

https://www.marsilioeditori.it/libri/scheda-libro/2971169/hypervenezia/

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Wednesday, November 03, 2021

Milan - Fondazione Prada - Domenico Gnoli

“I always employ simple, given elements, I don’t want either to add or take anything away. I have never even wanted to deform; I isolate and represent.”
Domenico Gnoli

Fondazione Prada - Milan

Domenico Gnoli

At the Fondazione Prada in Milan, the retrospective exhibition, Domenico Gnoli, until February 27 presents over 100 works, created by the artist (Rome 1933 – New York 1970) from 1949 to 1969 - as well as an equal number of his drawings. A chronological and documentary section, including historical materials, photographs and other supports, contributes to trace Gnoli’s life and artistic career more than fifty years after his death. The research behind the project conceived by Germano Celant was developed in collaboration with the artist’s archives in Rome and Mallorca, which preserve Gnoli’s personal and professional heritage.

Waist Line - Shoulder Line - Red the Knot - Trouser Pocket - 1969

https://www.fondazioneprada.org/

photograph by Yannick Vu - courtesy Fondazione Prada

Grandson of poet Domenico Gnoli and son of art critic and Art Historian Umberto Gnoli, Domenico initially followed two directions: his work as a theater set designer, costume designer and illustrator, and his pictorial work. In 1955 his sets for William Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Old Vic in London had a great success and made him known also in the United States. From 1959, he lived between Rome, New York, where he exhibited in several galleries and worked as an illustrator for magazines and publications, Paris and London before settling in 1963 in Deia on the island of Mallorca.

Domenico Gnoli - Mallorca - 1969

“I have always worked [as a painter] as I do now, but it did not attract attention as it was abstraction’s moment. Only now, thanks to Pop Art, has my painting become comprehensible. [...] I always employ simple, given elements, I don’t want either to add or take anything away. I have never even wanted to deform; I isolate and represent. My themes come from the world around me, familiar situations, everyday life; because I never actively mediate against the object, I experience the magic of its presence.”

Domenico Gnoli

In 1964, the year that Robert Rauschenberg achieved international recognition by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, Gnoli took a linguistic leap that allowed his analytical painting to emerge alongside his accomplishments as a set designer and illustrator. From that moment, his trajectory intersected the currents of minimalism, hyperrealism and Pop Art, even if, as the French writer Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues observed, “Gnoli’s manner of painting [...] illuminates as much as it describes the mundane objects by which man is surrounded. In the true sense of the word, it illustrates them, whereas the manner of pop artists popularizes them.” Gnoli also felt part of a “not eloquent” tradition of Italian painting developed by Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, and passed down via Piranesi, de Chirico, Carrà, Severini and Campigli. His work was also influenced by great contemporary artists like Bacon, Balthus, Dali, Magritte, Shahn and Sutherland.

Yannick Vu

Exhibition view - photograph by Roberto Marossi - courtesy Fondazione Prada

“To achieve perfect ineloquence, the impassiveness of things and the suspended magic of an impersonal reality, he had to turn his back on the tradition he loved so much and overturn its hierarchy of values. To deny ‘decoration’ by means of a new exploration of reality through detail.”

Salvatore Settis

Gnoli’s new line of research detached from the context and focused on details of human bodies or objects, accentuating their inherent sensuality and energy. His precise painting of physical texture, one that brought out the surfaces, colors and substance of organic and inanimate elements, is also characterized by scrupulous photographic framing. It is a factual approach that “puts all things, natural and artificial, on the same plane, expressing an egalitarian desire, the revenge of insignificant and disqualified elements in the ranking of values: the low, the secondary, the auxiliary, the neglectable,” as Germano Celant observes. The unexpected appearance on the canvas of apparently incongruous elements, such as busts, locks of hair, shoes, armchairs, drawers, ties and buttons, gives the viewer a slight mental jolt. It is an invitation to fill out these mysterious images, a combination of reality and imagination, placed at the center of “a sensual and carnal theater where the continuing exchange between things and bodies is enacted, the protagonists of a total complicity.”

Stripped Shirt Lapel - 1969 - Shirt Collar 14 1/2 - 1969 -

Red Dress Collar - 1969 - Robe Vert - 1967 - Fermeture eclair - Zipper - 1967 Finta Pellicia - 1965

Mimi Gnoli

Stripped Shirt Lapel - Shirt Collar 14 1/2 - 1969

Fabrizio Plessi

Green Bed Cover - 1969 - White Bed - 1968 - Letto Verde - 1965

Il Grande Letto Azzurro - 1965 - Iron Bed - 1959

Patrizio Bertelli, Yannick Vu, Robert Carsen and Ben Jakober

Nina Yashar

Domenico Gnoli - Purple Bust - 1969

Curly Red Hair - 1969 - Curl - 1969

Carlo Barbatti

Domenico Gnoli - Riga in Mezzo n. 1 - 1965 - Head of Hair - 1966

Portrait of Louis T. - 1967

Marco Arosio

Domenico Gnoli - Center Part - 1969 - Red Hair on Blue Dress - 1969

Stephan Janson and Madison Cox

Domenico Gnoli - Waist Line - 1969 - Shoulder Line - 1969

Chair - 1969 - Back View - 1968 - Open Drawer - 1968

Branche de Cactus - 1967 - Vasca da Bagno, Bagnarola - 1966

Beer Can and Crate - 1960 - Linen Baskets - 1959

Sketches

Pasquale Leccese

Domenico Gnoli - Branche de Cactus - 1967

Vasca da Bagno, Bagnarola - 1966

photograph and courtesy Nicholas Pearson

Daisy Garnett

Domenico Gnoli - Homme Seul - 1963

Mario Codognato

Domenico Gnoli - The Empty House - 1966 - L'Ascenseur - 1967

Brick Wall - 1968 - Corner - 1968

Anna Coliva

Domenico Gnoli - Inside Lady's Shoe - 1969 - Lady's Shoe - 1968

Scarpa di Fronte - 1967 - Sous la Chaussure - 1967

Newspaper and Shoes - 1959

The Mallorcan Delegation

Ben Jakober, Teresa Castella, Juan Baudes, Yannick Vu, Antonio Obrador,

Pablo Carrington and Alfonso Fierro March

Teresa Pomodoro

Domenico Gnoli - Tie - 1968 - Bow Tie - 1969

Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu

"I didn't make the error of going to study the cubist 'apples' as Severini suggested, which say nothing to me, nor any other 'purisms' proposed to people who take up painting. I have done nothing but transfer my own world as a decorator into the world of a painter, stripping it of any frills, of the ancient style, and all elegance, in short, laying bare what for me, between towers and solitary stairways, is the element of poetry, and sometimes of drama. I have simplified, abolished 'decoration', I have entrusted the role of trompe-l'oeil to the painted matter."

Domenico Gnoli

Paris 1954 - letter to his mother

Apple - 1968