7 October 2023 – 15 January 2024
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by Claire Baldo and Paul di Felice

Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Oculus Foto Festival (OFF) present, in collaboration with the European Month of Photography (EMOP) festival, a selection of emerging European artists who propose a reflection on the contemporary representation of nature and identity.

Based on the last two editions of EMOP (European Month Of Photography), this exhibition embraces a new selection of contemporary works and European artists working on current themes related to human relations with the environment, as well as on the issues of gender and identity in a context of social change.

Guest artists: Vanja Bučan, Krystyna Dul (in collaborazione con Keven Erickson), Marco Godinho, Jojo Gronostay, Inka&Niclas, Lisa Kohl, LABOTIV, Daphné Le Sergent, Lívia Melzi, Cristina Nuñez, Bruno Oliveira.

As in previous editions of the event, the general theme Rethinking Nature/Rethinking Landscape will revolve around different aspects related to the elements of nature and landscape, from deconstruction to artistic exploration.

As part of the Oculus Foto Festival, this edition of exhibitions and meetings will establish a new platform for emerging European photography in Venice.

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L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

5 May – 1 October 2023
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by Chiara Squarcina

The exhibition presents ten previously unseen paintings by Giovanni Soccol, which together create a space defined by a sustained rhythm that brings unity to the whole. The theme of this cycle of paintings is inspired by the vision of Venetian architecture rising from the water and dissolving in its own reflection.

Soccol, in fact, wanted to portray the fascination of an apparition that can vanish, as though more a dream than reality. Determining the whole is an analysis of the geometric relationships that bind the compositional elements into a view that is not in perspective but projected orthogonally onto the canvas so as not to alter the geometry of the forms. A nocturnal light links and unites the elements, imbuing the architecture with a metaphysical atmosphere that in recent decades reappears as a constant thread in the work of this Venetian artist.

The subject of this series of paintings are ten architectural symbols overlooking the Grand Canal, from the Dogana da Mar to the church of San Simeone, each of which has aroused a particular interest in Soccal and resulted in a formal and spiritual dialogue. The canvases, in 200 x150 cm frames, are all mixed media works, namely a lean tempera base, a water-in-oil emulsion corpus and oil-resin glazes, all prepared in the artist’s studio on the basis of research into historically traditional methods.

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L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

YUN HYONG-KEUN
A retrospective

11 May – 13 November 2019
Venezia, Palazzo Fortuny

Curated by Kim Inhye

In collaboration with National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul

With the support of Korea Foundation

Yun Hyong-keun (Cheongju 1928 – Seoul 2007) was one of the most important post-World War II Korean artists. His life was marked by his country’s troubled history: he was repeatedly imprisoned for his freedom of expression, and in 1950 he miraculously escaped a group execution by firing squad. Out of forty companions only he and four others survived.

After an initial phase of experimentation, his artistic style developed and became defined in the first half of the 1970s. It reflects the harshness he suffered, and is centred on a few essential elements. The very dark shade of pigment he used, a combination of ultramarine blue and burnt umber, was spread with a large brush in highly diluted successive layers that gradually impregnated the raw canvas. The ultramarine blue and burnt umber symbolise the sky and the earth, while the application of the paint parallels the phenomenon of water, which generates life by soaking into the porosity of the ground.

Yun’s large, essential expanses of colour allude to the architectural structure of large portals. In January 1977 Yun wrote in his diary: “The premise of my painting is the door of heaven and earth. Blue is the colour of the sky; brown is the colour of the earth. So I call them ‘heaven and earth’; the portal gives structure to the composition”.

Although Yun’s painting remained true to itself and its essential stylistic features, it underwent a temporal development, characterised by the oblique lines of heightened drama in the canvases painted in the aftermath of the Gwanju massacre (May 1980), to the defined, more spacious, rectangular expanses of colour from the 1990s onwards.

“I don’t recall when I first began to like the colour of earth. The same applies to the colour of trees and the colour of rocks. I love the colours of the natural landscape, and also the colour of nature in winter. […] True beauty comes from taking eternal textures and colours directly from nature. That’s what I try to express in my paintings. I don’t like to apply any primer to the canvas, also to avoid covering the texture of the natural fibres”.

This first European retrospective dedicated to Yun Hyong-keun has been organised in collaboration with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul and is curated by Kim Inhye, a leading expert on the work of the Korean master.

The decision to present Yun Hyong-keun’s work in Venice is also based on the conviction that his art is in particular harmony with this city of land and water.

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

THE FORTUNY
A family story

11 May – 13 November 2019
Venezia, Palazzo Fortuny

Curated by Daniela Ferretti with Cristina Da Roit

In collaboration with Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation

To mark the seventieth anniversary of the death of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, and to coincide with the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale, Palazzo Fortuny will pay tribute to the versatile Spanish artist by highlighting the importance of the family context in his artistic development. For the first time, an exhibition will focus on both father and son: Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838-1874) and his son Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949). The reference to the Biennale is neither accidental nor out of place, given that a few months after Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo’s death in 1950, a room was dedicated to him in the Spanish Pavilion, where he had held exhibitions on several occasions.

This current exhibition illustrates the reasons for this tribute by exploring two main, interwoven threads in the artistic lives of the two great Spaniards: the practice of painting as an intrinsic European tradition established by the ancient masters, and the passion for collecting as an opportunity for study and artistic development.

Mariano Fortuny y Marsal cultivated his interest in antiques by collecting and decorating his study with antique fabrics, glass, ceramics, statues, furniture and carpets. These artefacts were a rich source of artistic inspiration that he often transformed or reinterpreted in his paintings. Many of these objects, as well as a large number of his paintings, remained in the family after his untimely death. Although others were sold, Marsal’s wife Cecilia retained an important nucleus that was transferred to Venice in 1889, first to Palazzo Martinengo and finally to Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, now home to the Fortuny Museum. After the artist’s death, only a small part of the collections remained in Venice, since as Mariano and his wife Henriette had wished, many works were donated to various European museums and are now located in Barcelona, Castres, London, Madrid and Paris.

The current exhibition aims to partially reconstruct this collection, whose importance lies not only in its artistic and cultural value ​​but also the sentimental familial significance of bringing together in Palazzo Fortuny’s evocative rooms some of the most important items that made up the collection.

In addition to the common threads mentioned above, other aspects of this beguiling universe reveal continuity between father and son: the attention to light and its endless metamorphoses, a fascination for depicting clouds, an uninterrupted study of the past, and of orientalism and travel.

During his creative career Mariano Fortuny the younger widened the horizons of his artistic research, interpreting in a personal way the Wagnerian ideal of the total artwork that had so fascinated him in his youth. Although he did not surpass the quality and technique of his father’s painting, his numerous talents were revealed in his ingenious versatility. Combining art and science and art and technology, his work ranged from painting and sculpture to photography, graphics, interior decoration, clothing, set design and lighting; he produced fabrics, clothing and tempera paint, patented technological inventions and in general developed a flourishing business, creating a multifaceted but coherent whole under the “Mariano Fortuny Venise” label.

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

19 December 2018 > 24 March 2019
Venice, Palazzo Fortuny

Over 250 works from the Venetian Civic Museums and the State Hermitage Museum, as well as from other Italian and international public and private collections, illustrate the multiple meanings attributed to ruins through the centuries: from the architectural and sculptural remains of the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian-Babylonian and Syrian civilisations, to contemporary art that looks at the physical and moral ruins of today’s society.
Ruins of its architecture, cities and suburbs, but also of men and ideas, as the result of time, negligence, degeneration, natural or political tragedies such as war and terrorism.

As a result of the collaboration between the City of Venice, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg – strengthened by the agreements signed in recent years and the presence of “Ermitage Italia” in the lagoon city – and following Dimitri Ozerkov’s proposal, Palazzo Fortuny will be hosting the “Futuruins” exhibition from 19 December 2018 to 24 March 2019.

The exhibition reflects on the theme of ruins: an allegory for the inexorable passage of time, always uncertain and changeable, disputed between past and future, life and death, destruction and creation, Nature and Culture.
The aesthetics of ruins is a crucial element in the history of Western civilisation. The ruin as concept symbolises the presence of the past but at the same time contains within itself the potential of the fragment: a fragment that comes from antiquity, covered by the patina of time, which with its cultural and symbolic implications also becomes a valid “foundation stone” for building the future. It comes from the past, confers a wealth of meaning on the present and offers an awareness to future projects.

The contemporary itinerary opens with the extraordinary environmental installation by Anne and Patrick Poirier, and is followed by other works by Acconci Studio, Olivio Barbieri, Botto & Bruno, Alberto Burri, Sara Campesan, Ludovica Carbotta, Ugo Carmeni, Lawrence Carroll, Giulia Cenci, Giacomo Costa, Roberto Crippa, Lynn Davis, Giorgio de Chirico, Federico de Leonardis, Marco Del Re, Paola De Pietri, Jean Dubuffet, Tomas Ewald, Cleo Fariselli, Kay Fingerle, Maria Friberg, Luigi Ghirri, Gioberto Noro, John Gossage, Thomas Hirschhorn, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Jodice, Wolfgang Laib, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Jonatah Manno, Mirco Marchelli, Steve McCurry, Ennio Morlotti, Sarah Moon, Margherita Muriti, Claudio Parmiggiani, Lorenzo Passi, Fabrizio Prevedello, Dmitri Prigov, Judit Reigl, Christian Retschlag, David Rickard, Mimmo Rotella, Anri Sala, Alberto Savinio and Elisa Sighicelli.

In line with the tradition of exhibitions at the Fortuny, there are also a series of works specifically made for “Futuruins” that offer new stimuli for reflection on the present: in this case, these works are by Franco Guerzoni, Christian Fogarolli, Giuseppe Amato, Renato Leotta and Renata De Bonis. 

Between the two chronological extremes of the exhibition, there is a series of masterpieces in various media – paintings, sculptures, applied arts, graphic works – to suggest the major themes being examined.
Many have been selected from Venetian collections – ranging from the jellyfish by Arturo Martini and Franz von Stuck to the fire-lit nocturnal ruins of Ippolito Caffi and Urbino-made ceramics bearing themes of genesis and death – while others come from museums and private collections. For its part, the State Hermitage Museum has itself lent more than 80 works by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Monsù Desiderio, Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Jacopo and Francesco Bassano, Parmigianino, Veronese, Jacob van Host the Elder, Arturo Nathan and Alessandro Algardi.

The need to work on the concepts evoked by ruins has also been made apparent in the light of recent history, characterised by wars in which iconic and symbolic aspects stand out (the collapse of the Twin Towers, the devastation of the Baghdad museum, Palmyra…) and of the increasingly extreme climate changes on our planet. 

Co-organised with the Museo Statale Ermitage, San Pietroburgo

In collaboration with Ermitage Italia

Curated by Daniela Ferretti, Dimitri Ozerkov with Dario Dalla Lana

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In 1949, Zoran Mušicˇ (Bocavizza, 1909 – Venice, 2005) was commissioned by sisters Charlotte and Nelly Dornacher to decorate the basement of theirvilla in Zollikon near Zurich. The result was to be an example of a “total work of art”: in addition to creating paintings on plaster and on jute and linen canvas, the artist also designed the decorative patterns embroidered on the curtains and tablecloth that adorned the room.

Several pieces of furniture, though not designed by him, were chosen on his agreement and completed the space created for holding social gatherings. Most of the paintings were applied directly onto the wall plaster, five further compositions on linen cloth were stretched on frames attached to the walls, while decorated jute cloth was used for the entrance door, the same fabric as the curtains and a tablecloth embroidered to a design by the artist, who chose the colours and the various embroidery stitches. After years of neglect and abandonment, the room has been restored, thanks to the intervention of Paolo Cadorin, Mušicˇ ’s brother-in-law and director of the restoration department of Basel Kunstmuseum. He oversaw the removal of the plaster, its transfer on aluminium honeycomb panels, and the restoration of the canvases and furniture.

This complex task, completed by Cadorin’s students, finally returns “Zoran’s room” to thepublic through its recreation at Palazzo Fortuny as the central element of an exhibition and tribute to its creator. The many design motifs of an almost dizzying richness that Mušicˇ created for this room constitute a sort of iconographic compendium of artistic production in those years: from the Dalmatian motifs of women on horseback o carrying parasols, to donkeys and ponies in the rocky landscape or dancing in the void; from the ferries filled with horses or cattle, to the decorative borders of lozenges, stripes, spirals, roundels and tiles; and from the framed, hieratic faces recalling the work of Campigli, to an “iconic” portrait of Ida looking in the mirror and a self-portrait of Mušicˇ himself. In addition, there are the views of Venice: the domes and façade of the Basilica, the Palazzo Ducale, balustrades, arches, the piazza porticoes, the Basin of San Marco, San Giorgio, the Doganaand the fishing boats.

An extensive discerning selection of works created between 1947 and 1953, gathered from private collections and from the artist’s archive, completes the exhibition itinerary.

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

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The themes of collecting, the reasons and passions that underlie the creation of a private collection, are at the centre of an exhibition dedicated to the Giuseppe Merlini collection. According to Walter Benjamin, every collection is suspended between two opposing poles: order and disorder, and it is the figure of the collector that gives it meaning, far more than the objects that compose it.

The Merlini collection of sculpture, drawings and above all painting – exclusively Italian art except for some rare exceptions – traverses the entire twentieth century from the earliest decades with works that date back to the founding moment of modernism.

It includes drawings by Amedeo Modigliani, paintings by Filippo de Pisis and, then, works by Adolfo Wildt, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Mario Sironi, Gino Severini, Giorgio Morandi and Massimo Campigli, up until the period of Italian abstractionism and Arte informale, with important works by Mario Radice, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Piero Dorazio, Giulio Turcato, Roberto Crippa, Alfredo Chighine and Piero Ruggeri.

The collection therefore offers a very broad overview of twentieth-century Italian art, and at the same time prompts a major question: what energies drive the continuing desire to collect? What kind of intellectual curiosity and which casual encounters orient choices that contribute to giving each collection its own physiognomy and the impetus that makes it accessible to the public?

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

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To coincide with the 2017 Venice Art Biennale, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation will present their sixth, and final, exhibition: Intuition. Curated by Axel Vervoordt and Daniela Ferretti, Director of the Palazzo Fortuny, and co-curated by Dario Dalla Lana, Davide Daninos and Anne-Sophie Dusselier, the exhibition will explore how intuition has, in some form, shaped art across geographies, cultures and generations.
It will bring together historic, modern and contemporary works related to the concept of intuition, dreams, telepathy, paranormal fantasy, meditation, creative power, hypnosis and inspiration.
Intuition will be the last in a highly-acclaimed series at the Palazzo Fortuny cocurated by Axel Vervoordt and Daniela Ferretti, which include Artempo (2007), Infinitum (2009), TRA (2011), Tàpies. Lo Sguardo dell’artista (2013) and Proportio (2015).
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning: a feeling that guides a person to act in a certain way without fully understanding why.

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Co-produced with Axel & May Vervoordt  Foundation

Curated by Daniela Ferretti e Axel Vervoordt
Co-curated by Dario Dalla Lana, Davide Daninos and Anne-Sophie Dusselier

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The epic deeds of a family under the aegis of art, in Venice in the nineteenth and twentieth century

“Talent appears to rattle the wind…”

Lives that were inextricably interwoven, grandparents, children, sisters- and brothers-in law, brides and grooms; lives that were devoted to art in a city that overwhelmed them with its beauty, transmitting a sense of marvel to them: architects, sculptors and cabinet-makers, painters, photographers, restorers, inspirational forces in the liveliest artistic and cultural salons.

From Pieve di Cadore (like Titian), the Cadorins moved to Venice in the sixteenth century, and for three centuries they were a constant presence in the artistic vicissitudes of the city; this seemed to come to an end in 1848 when the last of the seven workshops in the Most Serene Republic was closed but it was only an interlude: it was Vincenzo who took over the family atelier several decades later, continuing until 1925; a great sculptor and woodcarver, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and soon became the head of an enterprise with over 40 skilled workers, receiving commissions from the Savoia family and D’Annunzio, for churches, houses and palazzi; they also took part in the Biennale exhibitions from the very beginning.

It was in the house-workshop situated on Fondamenta Briati that Vincenzo and his wife Matilde began a period under the aegis of art that was to last another three generations with many more protagonists – their children Ettore and Guido Cadorin, sculptor and painter, the architect Brenno del Giudice, the photographer Augusto Tivoli and his daughter-painter Livia, the lute-makers Fiorini, and Ida Cadorin, in art Barbarigo, and Zoran Music, all of whom were united by a life and passion for painting.

This is a story that was both intimate and public, made up of feelings, works of art, historical occurrences and cultural events in Venice in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and it shall be on show in the unique rooms of Palazzo Fortuny in Venice from 26 November 2016 to 27 March 2017, based on the memories of the last testimony and great heir of this dynasty, and thanks to the emotions that transpire from her tales.

Over the years Ida Barbarigo has collected works and historical testimonies of a family that are actually an outstanding patrimony of art and knowledge. More than 200 of these works are on display for this exhibition in Mariano Fortuny’s house-museum, a true artistic cross-roads, where Ettore and Guido Cadorin were often to be found when they were young; the result is the recollection of a family album that we can all admire, almost as if we were friends.

For example, the fragrance of Swiss pine shavings; the much-repeated phrase in the family “talent appears to rattle the wind”; the lines mother Livia Tivoli would read in French from “One Thousand and One Nights”, or the satirical newspaper that mocks Uncle Ettore’s passion for beautiful women, and who is constantly travelling around the world – “Our correspondent in Paris for the arts is unable to find him because he spends day and night admiring the legs of Isadora Duncan, the unrivalled dancer”. And then Papà Guido’s friends who “could do anything. The decorative arts, furniture, glass, fabrics, mosaics, but above all paint”: from Malipiero to Pirandello, the Venetian painters Nono, Ciardi, Favretto and others including Kokoschka. Then there is Ida’s maternal grandfather, Augusto Tivoli, the great photographer – but “the Tivolis never manage to accomplish anything” – and grandma Irene from the Fiorinis, a great lute-maker family from Bologna whose great-uncle Giuseppe Fiorini donated the Stradivarius instruments and archives to the Cremona museum. And here they are travelling to Paris with Zoran, the much dreamt-of Paris.

Other memories are interwoven with this web, first and foremost Jean Clair’s, a French academic and the curator of this exhibition, conceived by Daniela Ferretti – who personally knew Guido, Livia and Paola, as well as being a close friend of Ida and Zora, having been a frequent guest in their homes and studies for over forty years. Under her great guidance, the works were carefully selected to document an outstanding artistic epic. From Ida’s home Palazzo Balbi Valier, we have works, drawings and paintings by her father Guido Cadorin, which either hung on the walls of the large salon or study or were in the home’s countless rooms: they include some from the early twentieth century, The Idol (1911), Portrait of the Father (1910), the triptych, Flesh, Flesh, Flesh (1914) and the Nude and Landscape in Bloom from 1920, The Canal (19121); works from the fifties and sixties such as Punta della Dogana from 1956, Piazzale Roma from 1958, Acque from1963 or the beautiful Donde un giorno nacque il miracolo di Venezia [When One Day the Miracle of Venice was Born] from 1969, and canvases dated 1973.

Then come the wooden sculptures by the grandfather Vincenzo – a large stele, an art-nouveau flower stand from, the Tabacchine sculptures – but also his plaster casts and terracottas; we can also admire the ivories that are testimony to Ettore’s technical skill;  Augusto’s outstanding photographs that show us the faces that belong to this dynasty, scenes of family life, also a testimony to Venetian high society, the interior of Palazzo Papadopoli, the arrival of Emperor Wilhelm II and the collapse of the bell tower of Saint Mark’s in 1903.

Then we have Ida and Zoran. Her dreams: Caffè (1956), Jeu ouvert (1961) – and her anguish: from L’uomo di pietra [The Man of Stone] (1967) to Le persécuteur (1979), Demone or Saturno (1997) and I terrestri [The Terrestrials] (2002).

And Zoran’s dramatic ink drawings, with their permanent vision of the terrible vision of grief-stricken bodies in Dachau, and his paintings: from the fifties, – Summer in Istria (1957), Terre dalmate [Dalmatian Lands] (1958) – and images of Venice in the eighties such as th Canale della Giudecca (1980) or Il Mulino stucky, and Portrait of Ida in ’83 and ’86, taking us to the last period when his sight was fading: Figura grigia seduta[Seated Figure in Grey] and La poltrona grigia [Grey Armchair] both from 1998.

“Daddy kept telling us: above all, don’t become artists. That’s something terrible!”

The exhibition catalogue was edited by Daniela Ferretti (ed. Antiga), with essays by: Laura Bossi Régnier who collected Ida Barbarigo’s memories, Ester Brunet, Silvia Carminati, Jean Clair, Daniela Ferretti, Valerio Terraroli, Marco Vallora, and Monique Veillon Cadorin.

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Curated by Jean Clair
designed by Daniela Ferretti

We would to thank Consorzio Tutela Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.

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Each exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny is inspired by a desire to trace the multidisciplinary route that epitomised Mariano Fortuny’s life in art.

The theme of collecting is therefore a perfect topic to explore in relation to the versatile and mysterious identity of the great Spaniard. The exhibition Quand fondra la neige ou ira le blanc? [When the snow melts, where does the white go?], whose title is taken from a work by Rémy Zaugg, starts a many-faceted project which intends to provide now and in future years a portrait of important collectors of contemporary art by presenting their valuable art collections.

The exhibition’s aim is to examine the question: how has the role of the art collector evolved from the time of the great Renaissance collections to the present day? This theme of great contemporary interest has in Enea Righi its first and main protagonist: businessman from the city of Bologna, who in over thirty years thanks to his passion and intuition and by supporting young artists and curators, has formed one of the most important collections of contemporary art in our country.

Eric Mezil and Lorenzo Paini, curators of the exhibition, have selected a group of works from Righi collection, starting from the rooms and the history of Palazzo Fortuny. Each floor is conceived as a cross section of our times, where works of artists from the 1960s (Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Buren, Lawrence Weiner, Enzo Mari, Cy Twombly, Rémy Zaugg and many others) are juxtaposed with those of some of the most rigorous interpreters of the current international scene (Walid Raad, Zoe Leonard, Ryan Gander, Thomas Hirschhorn, Philippe Parreno, Francesco Vezzoli, etc.) in a dialogue on various themes, such as architecture, performance, the body and the void.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue/objet d’art.

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Designed by Daniela Ferretti
Curated by Eric Mezil and Lorenzo Paini

Special thanks Consorzio Tutela Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo Fortuny.