Venice: Le Stanze del Vetro – I Santillana exhibition

Venice: Le Stanze del Vetro – I Santillana exhibition. The superb exhibition, I Santillana, at Le Stanze del Vetro, until August 3, traces the double trajectory of artists Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana, brother and sister who are direct descendants of the legendary Venini dynasty.  The siblings live and work in Venice where both have been developing, since the end of the 1980s, a body of work, which has come to achieve international recognition.

Above. Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana are reflected in Alessandro’s wall sculpture Senza Titolo (MUDAC), 2011 – hand-blown and mirrored glass on plywood with silver leaf.

 Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro

I Santillana. The exhibition brings together approximately 170 works including sculptures, artworks and glassware selected from a period of more than two years of meetings and conversations between Martin Bethenod and the siblings. The works on display investigate the diverse yet intertwined dialectic of the two artists, each following an autonomous artistic path but both relying on a common family heritage and biography.

Above.  Installation view room 5 in the foreground sculptures by Laura de Santillana and on the wall Alessandro Diaz de Santillana’s wall works.

 

Laura de Santillana – Senza Titolo (cristallo MoG) – 2009

Hand-blown and shaped glass with metal base

I Santillana – Press conference. Martin Bethenod, CEO of the Francois Pinault Foundation, Laura de Santillana, P. R. Elena Casadoro, Secretary General of the Giorgio Cini Foundation Pasquale Gagliardi and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana.

 Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro

 

I Santillana.  The exhibition is organized around a central axis representing their shared memory. The galleries of Le Stanze del Vetro have been adapted in order to enable a comparison and an ongoing dialogue between the works of the two artists. The central corridor named La Rue serves as a meeting point between the worlds of Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana and creates a cross-play of connections and references, but also of disagreements, though never forced nor far-fetched but rather revealing of the formal similarities, the peculiarities and differences between the artistic works and creative processes of Laura and Alessandro.

Above. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - Installation view of Room 7. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - S5 – 2013. Hand-blown glass and slumped glass.  Patina. Marine plywood and black lacquer.

 

 Marie-Rose Kahane, Chairman of Pentagram Stiftung and Pasquale Gagliardi, Secretary General of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.

I Santillana – La Rue. Laura de Santillana – Mon Malheur, 2009. Cast glass with metallic textile. Mon Bonheur, 1998. Jasmin garland in plexi box.

 

I Santillana. Laura de Santillana places Grey CU, 2005, hand-blown and shaped glass on the table.

I Santillana – La Rue. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana – C.DI.S.XIII, 1993. Hand-blown and ground glass.

I Santillana – La Rue.  A portrait of Laura and Alessandro’s mother by Richard Meitner – Anna Venini, 2004. Hand-blown glass, flat glass, enamels, wood.

 

Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro

I Santillana. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - Installation view of Room 6. HG and HGS, 2011 series. In the center, Senza Titolo, 1996. Hand-blown and mirrored glass. Below - HGS 5, 2011. Hand-blown, slumped and mirrored glass on plywood.

 

Neo director of the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Institute of Art History Luca Massimo Barbero and member of the Scientific Committee for the I Santillana exhibition has fun with the president of The Venice International Foundation Franca Coin.

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The Venice Glass Week 2023 - Le Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter

Le Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia

Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter

Winner - Fondazione di Venezia - Prize

In occasion with The Venice Glass Week at Le Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia, the exhibition - Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter - until November 26 - in collaboration with the De Santillana Foundation Stichting - curated by Rainald Franz and Michele Tavola. The exhibition celebrates one of the most important figures in the international glass scene, the late Laura de Santillana, by placing in dialogue two of her vital bodies of work: sculptures crafted in nearby Murano and artworks made in the artist's later years in the Czech Republic. The daring sculptures presented in the exhibition capture her unparalleled artistic vision, as she consistently ventured beyond traditional material boundaries.

Laura de Santillana - Sleeves - Czech Republic - 2016

Antonio Canova - Creugas - 1796-1801 + Madame Letizia Bonaparte - 1804-1807

"I think in Glass"

Laura de Santillana

Laura de Santillana - 1955 – 2019 - was born in Venice and trained in New York, where she also worked in the Vignelli studio. From 1975 to 1985, she worked for Venini, the family company founded by her grandfather Paolo Venini, designing objects and lamps now collected globally. From 1989 to 1993, she served as the artistic director of EOS. In 1993, she left the design world to dedicate herself solely to art. Her first exhibition was in Seattle, and her works have since gained global prominence. She created artworks between Venice, the USA, and the Czech Republic. Museums like the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Museé des Arts Décoratifs, and several esteemed private collections house her works. 

Laura de Santillana - Sleeves - 2015-2016

 Caterina Tognon Gallery - Exhibition - Laura de Santillana - Sleeves

 “It was as if I found myself with painting tools in hand. As if I had bags full of colors already inside the works. The first - Flag - sculptures reminded me of canvases due to their two-dimensionality, but they had such a tangible substance 

that they inevitably became three-dimensional.

I cannot imagine doing anything more painterly than with glass”.

Laura de Santillana

Color

For de Santillana, color was not just complementary to form; it stood as its own distinct language, independent and equally expressive. Her interest in color began at Venini, and it developed into a central element throughout her career. From 1989 onwards, she embarked on global travels, immersing herself in non-Western traditions that enriched her understanding of color and form. Her extended research on color is exemplified in the Flags series, of which Primary Colors is a prominent example. This artwork, crafted with the intricate incalmo technique, draws the viewer's attention to the junctures of color, simultaneously high-lighting and veiling these crossover points with an opaque finish. 

Primary Colors -  Murano - 2011

Elements

This stand-alone installation represents the culmination of the artist’s experimentation in Bohemia. Between 2013 and 2019, Laura de Santillana grappled with the challenge of crafting sculptures that could stand independently. Unable to find a solution during this intense experimental phase, she devised unique configurations that eliminated the need for a traditional base. Partly because of this, these sculptures exhibit an unusual dynamism as they are mounted on rotating bases that permit adjustments to each cylinder's orientation. De Santillana's enduring interest in the symbolism of architectural elements, particularly columns, can be found in this seminal sculpture. Viewed in dialogue with Paolo Veronese's 16th-century masterpiece, The Feast in the House of Levi, a monumental painting with distinctive structural symmetry, 7 Elements highlights De Santillana's desire to craft stable solutions for vertical glass works. Unlike the columns in the painting behind, De Santillana’s glass pieces exude life, movement, and a hint of humanity, with vivid colors accentuated by their arrangement. 

Laura de Santillana - 7 Elements - Czech Republic - 2015

Paolo Veronese - The Feast in the House of Levi - 1573

"Hosting Laura de Santillana's work is an extraordinary opportunity, this exhibition is a realization of our long-held aspiration...maintaining alignment with the museum's ethos and engaging with our permanent collection. The Gallerie open once again to glass and contemporary art, marking its significance during Glass Week a time when Venice reminisces about its unparalleled artistic legacy. Laura's narrative and creations capture this tradition like no other." 

Giulio Manieri Elia

Director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia

 Michele Tavola, Co-curator, 

Giulio Manieri Elia, Director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia,

 Miriam Rejas Del Pino  Assistant Curator

Leon Diaz de Santillana, President De Santillana Foundation

Elements
Laura de Santillana - Liquid Orange Red - Seattle - 2015

Incisions

Laura de Santillana's approach leant towards abstraction. She aspired to purify form rather than seek figuration, yet there's an undeniable anthropomorphic presence in her works. Many sculptures, like those displayed here, possess body-like features derived from intentional incisions: a navel observed in Blessure, and a gilded backbone evident in Untitled. The artist herself anthropomorphizes her works, referring to the top opening of these sculptures as a “mouth”. 

Untitled - Murano - 2006 - Mirra II - Murano - 2005 - Blessure -  Murano - 2003

 

 

Incisions

Laura de Santillana - Egyptian Partition - Murano - 2013

Francesco Hayez - Rinaldo e Armida - 1813 + Francesco Hayez - Aristide -1812

Flattening

De Santillana’s technique results in an almost two-dimensional, canvas-like shape. Trapped within this flat, rectangular form lies an ethereal presence — possibly the lingering breath of the maestro — giving rise to unique patterns and intriguing imperfections. Drawing comparisons to ancient artifacts, these works were often referred to as - books - tablets - steles - emphasizing both their physical appearance and their evocative, timeless nature. Within this flattened rectangular canvas, de Santillana created layers of complexity through a refined expressive language. This form, with its aesthetic research, allowed her to definitively break with industrial design, marking a point of no return in her creative process. 

Ciel Terrestre - Murano - 2017 - Nox - Murano 2017 

(In8.Vo) Lichen - Murano - 2018

Framing 

Since her first trip to East and Southeast Asia in 1989, de Santillana’s artistic research has been deeply influenced by Eastern philosophies. During these journeys, she became captivated by empty frames, photographing and collecting them. These frames poetically straddle the line between - inside -  and - outside - standing as poignant thresholds that both bind and separate spaces.  In de Santillana’s sculptures, there lies a powerful union between the interior - or core - of the artwork and its external frame. No longer content with the mere suggestion of an internal space, de Santillana introduced materials that would underscore its presence. Using materials such as metallic nets and gold leaves, she highlights and sanctifies these interior spaces. Pieces like Tav. I capture this dynamic perfectly, where glass, reminiscent of supple flesh, drapes over and guards a metallic endoskeleton. These materials not only provide texture and contrast but also emphasize the ‘inside’ she wished to accentuate. 

Tav. 1 - Murano - 2007 - Untitled - Murano  - 2004c.  - Kumran (Infant) - Murano - 2005

Exhibition - I Santillana - 2014

The exhibition at the Stanze del Vetro - I Santillana -  traced the double trajectory of artists Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana, brother and sister who were direct descendants of the legendary Venini dynasty. 

Laura de Santillana

Seriality

Initially recognized for her role as a designer in the family’s business - Venini - and as the artistic director at EOS, de Santillana made significantly fewer design objects after Venini was sold in 1985. From the early 1990s, de Santillana would say that she was driven to create objects devoid of function — self-contained sculptures where glass becomes secondary to a profound aesthetic experience. While she distanced herself from design, its principles continued to influence her art, especially the idea of seriality. Upon identifying a desired sculptural form, which she called the - initiator piece - she would methodically explore its many variations. Each piece in the series would build on the previous, and collectively they present a cohesive narrative.  Within this hall, visitors will find some of the artist’s most ambitious works: the Twins and Triplets. These artworks were produced in the Czech Republic between 2013 and 2019 using the - slumping - technique.

Triplet - Czech Republic - 2019 - Twin - Czech republic - 2019

Laura de Santillana

Twin - Czech Republic - 2017

"The work of Laura de Santillana, born in Venetian glass, has flown around the world, in Japan, the United States, the Czech Republic and elsewhere: in the exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia , this hieratic path is described with aesthetic and chronological precision”

Fondazione di Venezia Prize

Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter

Winner - The Venice Glass Week

 Fondazione di Venezia - Prize

The third edition of the Fondazione di Venezia Prize was awarded to the De Santillana Foundation Stichting and the Gallerie dell'Accademia for the Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter - exhibition curated by Rainald Franz and Michele Tavola.  Four years after the artist's death, the exhibition presents over thirty works, emblematic of the experimentation of the last years of Laura de Santillana's activity, a leading exponent of the Murano tradition and the art of processing of glass in the world. The jury was composed of Jean Blanchaert - Curator and member of the Scientific Committee - Giovanna Palandri - Director of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti and Paola Marini -  President of the Fondazione di Venezia.

Leon Diaz de Santillana, Paola Marina and Giulio Manieri Elia

Laura de Santillana - Related Blogs Posts

At Home with Laura de Santillana - 2014

Le Stanze del Vetro – I Santillana exhibition - 2014

 

 Caterina Tognon – Laura de Santillana – Sleeves - 2016

The Venice Glass Week - Around Town - 2019

Text - Many Thanks 

Text was adapted from

Laura de Santillana - Beyond Matter - Pamphlet

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia

The Venice Glass Week - Website

 

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Venice – Giudecca: At Home with Laura de Santillana

 

Venice – Giudecca:  At Home with Laura de Santillana. When not travelling, for work and exhibitions, Laura de Santillana is at home on the Giudecca Island of Venice, in the huge loft space especially designed to hold her vast collection of books. It is here that the renowned and esteemed artist, who works primarily in glass, not only puts up her feet to enjoy a good book but also works on projects, when the “acqua alta” prevents her from crossing the canal to her studio. It is here, placed around the loft, that one can see her sculptures, which she makes with maestro glass blowers from all over the world according to the technique she wants to use (or depending on the project she wants to make); from Murano to the Czech Republic to the United States. This year has been very busy with a major exhibition in Venice, one in Japan and now Vienna, which just opened. On her next trip, before Christmas, she will be a judge for a glass competition in the USA. Not surprisingly when back home she likes to curl up and relax. But traveling is necessary for her mental and emotional health, she says. She cannot stay quiet too long.

Above. Laura de Santillana with the tip of her Mountains sculpture 2010-2011, made at Museum of Glass for the Scapes exhibition, 2012.  Laura is the granddaughter of Paolo Venini, founder of the legendary Venini glassworks in Murano. Today, she is completely at ease in any furnace and remembers as a small child going to the Venini glassworks. “I remember the floors squeaking when we ran from one room to the other and the office upstairs that was our grandfathers and then our fathers…it was a very fascinating place.” She recalls. “But, the furnace was the place that really captured my fantasy, the fire and the molten glass, and the noise and the smell of glass.”

photograph by Manfredi Bellati

 

Books – On two floors, long bookcases house Laura’s vast collection of books; poetry, travel books, Simenon’s Maigret stories, books on Indian culture and religion, books on myths, good novels of all kinds, Japanese literature, from Genji to Murakami etc., etc.  
Below. On the shelf of the Vietti table, in the background, a candleholder made of a painted shell held by a bronze Chinese man.  The loft space is decorated with a soft mix of oriental, antique, modern and mid-century pieces.  “Reading is part of myself as much as breathing. I don’t remember when I first started to love books; I would say that it is a virus than runs in our family. Reading can take you somewhere else as much, or more than travels. I usually read at night in bed.” She explains.

Art - Big Flats – Yellow – 2013 - exhibited in Paris at Galerie l’Arc en Seine in October 2013 but made in Mukilteo, north of Seattle; behind the sculpture, bronze and wax forms. Laura’s sculptures start as bubbles or as cylinders “…a big bubble, I am shaping it, squeezing it, squaring it until it gets to the right size and proportion. That means that before I start I have to give the maestro glassblower precise instructions, as to height, form, color, sequence and thickness…we discuss the process before we start. In this case, I don’t need to draw, it's a process that I have been doing for quite a long time with maestro Simone Cenedese and American maestro Jim Mongrain, we communicate in very simple language, as there is no time to explain when you are in the middle of the working process.” she says.

 

Memories - Leaning on the bookcase is a painting by Spadini, which she inherited from her Venini grandparents, next to it is Laura’s Big Meteor sculpture, 2009, blown at the Museum of Glass (MoG), Tacoma, and exhibited in the 3 Visions in Glass exhibition starting at the Barry Friedman Gallery in New York, and then traveling to museums in the US and in Europe.

 

photographs courtesy Laura de Santillana

Art - A Wax Big Flats sculpture 2013, is placed on chairs in front of a specially designed glass-case, which like a bookcases houses a series of sculptures, it “acts” as a kind of repository of memories. “The chairs are designed by Bob Wilson, who is my collector of mine and we exchanged works.”

 

Art - On the raised platform of the loft, next to the big window and balcony, which overlooks a garden, a futon daybed is placed next to Laura's Cosmic Eggs sculptures, designed for the Scapes exhibition, Museum of Glass, MoG, Tacoma 2012, leaning on the wall a big drawing of a chandelier by Martinuzzi for a Venini. 

 

Memories – “Mon Bonheur is the title of this garland of jasmine flowers from an Indian trip to Madurai, behind it on the lacquer tray by Tohru Matsuzaki, are some small objects I collected during various trips. My trips take me mainly to Asia: India, Japan. I would love to visit Iran.  When I can, I like to visit Egypt, and Cairo is a city I like very much. Tulips are flowers I love, but I really don’t have a favorite flower.” On the left, Laura de Santillana’s Cosmic Eggs sculptures.

 photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Art - Laura de Santillana - Black Heads, 2009 to current. “The idea to start working on the Heads sculptures came to me from an exhibition I saw in Paris at the Musee Cernuschi. It was a show of Chinese Buddha heads and it was only the heads because in China during the Cultural Revolution they destroyed all the images of the gods but they couldn’t destroy the heads as they represent the container of thought, so they hid them…  It was after this exhibition that I started working on Heads sculptures.” Laura explains.

Below. Indian felt from Jain temple, is used here to protect and hide the Heads sculptures.

 photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Art - Working sketches for Heads sculptures.

Entertaining -  With Laura, old time friend, dealer Barry Friedman. “We worked together from 1996 until this year, when he closed his gallery in Chelsea, New York.”

 

Entertaining - Minimal design black plates from Sabbie e Nebbie near Goldoni’s house in Venice are placed on Thai silk tablemats; the glasses are designed by Laura and produced in Murano.

Food – Typical Venetian vegetables, Braised Artichoke Hearts Stuffed with Local Shrimp from the lagoon.  Laura buys her fruit and vegetables at the small local weekly Sacca Fisola market on the Giudecca.

 

Food - Pumpkin Sherbet with Whipped Cream, sits on a plate depicting a V for Venini, the plates were specially designed by Piero Fornasetti for nonno Paolo and nonna Ginette Venini.

 

beloved Mau

 

 

 

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