From 6 May to 22 November 2026
Venice, Museo Fortuny

Curated by
Elisabetta Barisoni and Cristina Da Roit

The Museo Fortuny presents the work of the Austrian sculptor Erwin Wurm for the first time in Italy with a major monographic exhibition. Born in 1954 at Bruck an der Mur, in the course of his career, Wurm has radically expanded the concept of sculpture, questioning notions of time, mass and surface, abstraction and representation. For many decades he has been using clothes to deal with sculptural issues. On this journey, his path has frequently crossed that of Mariano and Henriette Fortuny.

After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts in Vienna in the late 1970s and ’80s, his One Minute Sculptures, begun in 1996-97, brought Wurm great international success. In them, the artist provides observers with instructions that indicate actions or poses to be performed with everyday objects, such as chairs, buckets, fruit, sweaters… These sculptures are ephemeral by nature, and this has led Wurm to challenge the formal qualities of different visual languages by superseding the boundaries between art and everyday life, viewer and participant. 

The One Minute Sculptures series  explores the idea of the human body as sculpture; in other works Wurm anthropomorphises everyday objects in unexpected ways, adding legs to bags, contorting sausage-like shapes (Abstract Sculptures), or expanding the volume of technical and architectural objects (Fat Car, Fat House). 

Wurm considers the physical act of gaining and losing weight as a sculptural gesture, and often creates the illusion of bodily growth or shrinkage in his work.

Humour is also an important instrument, but at the same time his work invokes essential philosophical, psychological and social questions. A critique of contemporary society often appears in his practice, particularly in response to capitalist influences and the consequent social pressures that the artist sees as contrary to our inner ideals. Wurm stresses this dichotomy by working within the liminal space between high and low, to explore what he himself sees as a farcical and invented reality.

“The ordinary is so close and so familiar to us that we are inclined to neglect it. Looking at the ordinary from the perspective of the absurd and paradox gives us an opportunity to see something different, perhaps more interesting.”
– Erwin Wurm

The exhibition can be visited according to the museum’s opening hours and access conditions. 

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

28 January – 6 April 2026
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Project by
Associazione Archivio Antonio Scaccabarozzi

Curated by
Ilaria Bignotti
Camilla Remondina

In collaboration with
Galleria Clivio, Milano-Parma

The site-specific exhibition entitled Antonio Scaccabarozzi. Diafanés is devoted to the dialogue between the work and the gaze that goes beyond it.

Through the concept of the diaphanous, the exhibition is intended to allow the emergence of linguistic and methodological affinities between the artistic research of one of the protagonists of neo-concrete and conceptual Italian art between the 1970s and the new millennium, Antonio Scaccabarozzi, and the eclectic and exuberant investigation of his host here, Mariano Fortuny.

Consisting of light, translucent, colourful and transparent works, the exhibition interweaves visual arts and the semiotics and phenomenology of the image, inviting the public to embark on an intense journey of investigation of Scaccabarozzi’s work. The exhibition focuses on the works realized between the 1980s and the early two thousands, when the artist began to use first acetates and then polyethylene as his preferred fields for the creation of events in the painted space and as sites of exploration of the relationships between architecture, the observer and the work. Fascinated by its lightness, transparency and versatility, Scaccabarozzi saw polyethylene as the site enabling him to take on the problem of vision and its limits, consideration of the double, the front and back of the painting and its relationship and extension in space on a new level, to the point of making it autonomous and independent from every other artistic technique.

The cycles of Free Quantities, works in which colour is released onto the transparent surface, Polyethylenes, sheets of this material cut and shaped in forms of architectural descent, and Ice-Fields, overlapping coloured plastic membranes intended to create unprecedented chromatic tones, are in an ideal dialogue with the extraordinary insights of Mariano Fortuny: from the pleat, capable of radically changing the idea and features of clothing, to the search for the iconographic alphabets of the past, to the attention devoted to the new technologies of his time. Furthermore, the two artists have in common the inspiration provided by the statuary and architecture of Ancient Greece and the study of colour hues in their calibrated potential and their assonances with the ancient. Both seem to be attentive and cultured weavers of diaphanous works, placed in the hands and eyes of the public with the request to scrutinize them and go beyond them, to see through their stratifications in the name of a contemplation filled with poetry.

This is an exhibition that presents itself, therefore, as a plastic fresco marked by the rhythm of the degrees of the visible, in which the work becomes the diaphragm of a chromatic and seductive breath, interrogating the user as a “limit zone of contrasting forces”, as Scaccabarozzi has declared.

Antonio Scaccabarozzi Born in Merate, in the province of Lecco, in 1936, he developed over more than forty years of activity a coherent artistic language aimed at analyzing the fundamentals of the visual through a phenomenological-mathematical investigation of color within the space of pictorial occurrence. He articulated this research in coherent cycles: from his early experiences tied to the neo-concrete and programmed art movements of the 1960s, to the analytical works of the 1970s, and finally to the experiments that, from the 1980s onward, have made him a unique figure on the Italian and international scene.
He has taken part in major exhibitions dedicated to artistic languages akin to his own, held in public institutions such as the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren, and the Kunstverein in Ingolstadt and Darmstadt; in addition, he has exhibited with historic galleries such as Studio Casoli, Galleria Ferrari in Verona, Galleria Lorenzelli in Bergamo, and Galleria del Cavallino in Venice.
His work is safeguarded by the Associazione Archivio Antonio Scaccabarozzi, directed by his wife and heir Anastasia Rouchota, and is represented by Galleria Clivio in Milan-Parma.

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

Fotografie tra viaggio, architettura e paesaggio

15 October 2025 – 12 January 2026
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by
João Rocha
Marco Ferrari
with Cristina Da Roit

In collaboration with
Università IUAV di Venezia
Università di Évora

Under the Patronage of
the Portuguese Embassy in Italy

When the British photographer Francis Frith (1822-1898) reached the historic site of Abu Simbel on his first travels in Egypt from September 1856 to July 1857, the “Venetian” brothers and photographers Antonio Beato and Felice Beato were travelling in the Mediterranean towards the Middle East between Egypt, Turkey and the Holy Land. The two photographers had already documented the Crimean War (1853-1856) and in the following year together or separately, they would photograph the revolt of the Indian population against the English empire and the second Opium War.

Despite representing a stereotypically cultural expression of 19th-century travellers, their photographic campaigns went beyond the spirit of the Grand Tour. One might inquire what stimulated these two “Venetians” to undertake such lengthy journeys for the purpose of photography. What were the motives for establishing a presence in distant locations and tackling on such a fruitful and innovative photographic project?

Around 1860, Antonio Beato travelled from China to Cairo, “the mother of cities”, as Ibn Battuta described it, and for almost forty years he captured, with meticulous detail and a discerning eye for composition, a series of remarkable images of Egypt’s temples and archaeological sites, the sophisticated architecture of the Cairo Citadel, the dynamic intricacy of the Mamluk edifices, and the surrounding landscapes.

Printed either individually or in exquisite albums with photographs also by Félix Bonfils, Adelphoi Zangaki or Pascal Sébah, these images became objects of an Orient that could only be imagined, which a largely European elite was eager to acquire. They marked the advent of documentary photography and are likely to have been instrumental in establishing the study of early Islamic architecture too.

About two hundred years of Antonio Beato’s birth and the fortieth anniversary of the inaugural and, thus far, sole Venetian exhibition devoted to the Beato brothers (Ikona Gallery), it seemed appropriate to bring the work of this important photographer back to his native region. One of the exhibition’s objectives is to fill this gap by presenting a group of Beato’s photographs, which have been identified in the archives of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, and in other Italian and international collections.

The exhibition will elucidate the multifaceted cultural and political implications inherent in the photographs, extending beyond conventional interpretations. It will examine the relations between the architectural and contextual elements associated with the objects photographed, and a curated selection of 19th-century books will provide visitors with a fuller cultural context.

The exhibition is given a congenial venue in the Museo di Palazzo Fortuny, not only because of the role of this institution in the Venetian cultural panorama and its close ties to photography, but also because the story of Mariano Fortuny seems involuntarily linked to that of Antonio Beato. In the early 20th century, he also visited the same places, drawing, photographing them and collecting his memories in precious notebooks, still preserved in his private library, which will now be exhibited for the first time.

Admission from 15 October 2025 to 12 January 2026, with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

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

14 May – 5 October 2025
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by
Chiara Squarcina

A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid, Alberto Rodríguez Serrano (Madrid, 1988) is an exceptionally talented artist with an international presence on the contemporary scene.
Well-trained in traditional art techniques and European art history, Serrano creates from a solid foundation of core skills. His subjects are varied, contemporary and innovative, enriched by a knowledge of the past as well as a deep awareness rooted in the 21st century.
In June 2015 his work was added to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid: one of the few living artists, and the youngest, to receive this honour. In 2017 he presented his work Pietà to His Holiness Pope Francis, again as one of the youngest artists in the Vatican collection.

Serrano’s work, rich in quality and sensibility, embodies a new way of understanding art, demolishing the static concept of traditional painting. Using an innovative technique based on the use of luminescent pigments, both phosphorescent and fluorescent, he gives his work an emotional depth and material complexity that far exceeds any other work with similar qualities seen to date. Through the interplay of light and shade, the paintings come to life, with intense feeling and a sense of depth.

The exhibition displays some of the most important works created by Serrano in recent years, a compendium of different artistic representations resulting from long periods of experimentation and work on innovative techniques.

The exhibition is divided into two types of paintings: works painted using traditional techniques and exhibited in a traditional way, in permanent mode, hence for the whole duration of the exhibition, and luminescent works, shown to the public by the artist himself through an interplay of carefully calibrated darkness and light, and therefore viewable in their complexity only during performances scheduled in the course of the five months of the exhibition.

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Born in Madrid in 1988, Alberto Rodríguez Serrano began his artistic training in the Spanish capital, graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Complutense University. He went on to specialise in printmaking, engraving, and graphic design at the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, with which he has collaborated since 2012 on the design of commemorative and collectible coins.
In Italy, at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, he refined his personal style and deepened his understanding of classical art.
He is co-founder of the Estudio-Taller de Arte Esbozos in Madrid, where he teaches drawing, photography, and airbrushing.
His international career gained rapid momentum between 2014 and 2019, through collaborations with renowned galleries and institutions in Spain, Italy, the United States, China, New Zealand, Colombia, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
In 2015, one of his works was acquired by the Carmen Cervera permanent collection at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and in 2018 his painting Pietà was added to the Vatican collection.
With innovative projects that captivate, surprise, and move audiences, Alberto Rodríguez Serrano has established himself as a distinctive and compelling voice in the landscape of contemporary art.

Admission to the exhibition from 14 May to 5 October 2025, with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

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

26 February – 5 May 2025
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by
Niccolò Lucarelli
Chiara Squarcina

Sergio Monari’s artworks explore the complexity of Graeco-Roman classicism. His sculptures stand as critical reinterpretations of contemporary society, taking as a model the classical world which, although not without defects, had beauty as its supreme ideal, as the goal of a civil journey made up of coherence and spirituality, and which had in myth both a spiritual and social frame of reference, serving as a bridge between experience and the order of the cosmos.

Monari questions the importance of myth in the construction of social institutions, without debasing it in itself, but attacking the inability of contemporary society to acknowledge its significance. Poetry, love, glory, war, destiny, time, vanity and death take form in a sort of fiction that is ancient yet always new, through an arrangement that unfolds, work after work, in chapters modelled in the form of human features, drives, aspirations, doubts and fears. A human comedy made up of statues that live on through their narrative power, characters embodied in the three-dimensionality of bronze.

Through this narrative, the ground floor of the Museo Fortuny is transformed into a theatrical stage that ranges between eras through sculpture made up of glances and words, perceived as both pungent and provocative, passionate and poetic, sculpture that possesses a narrative charge capable of kindling the drama before the viewer’s gaze.

Despite their conflictual character, Monari’s sculptures reveal the urgency to recover the spiritual dimension, and by virtue of this they present themselves to the observer as so many fleeting hierophanies, ephemeral revelations of that sacredness that once belonged to the individual.

Monari’s presence at Palazzo Fortuny, therefore, stresses the need to strengthen and make relevant the dialogue with that Graeco-Roman culture that is the foundation of our society. Through his work we can rediscover modernity, as happened with Mariano Fortuny, who translated the values and symbols of classical antiquity into a contemporary and timeless language by his iconic garments and the decorative patterns of his printed fabrics.

Admission to the exhibition from 26 February to 5 May 2025 with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

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

10 April 2024 – 13 January 2025
Venice, Fortuny Museum

Curated by Chiara Squarcina, Pier Paolo Pancotto
In collaboration with GALLERIA CONTINUA

Eva Jospin (Paris, 1975) completed her academic studies in Paris in 2002 and was a pensioner of the Académie de France in Villa Medici, Rome in 2016-2017. Eva Jospin’s research has always drawn inspiration from nature in all its semantic and visual articulations, that is, captured as much in its original state as in the multiple iconographic and iconological interpretations that have been offered of it over time.

Through the use of poor materials – cardboard, plant-based elements and fibers, metal portions, fabric – she gives life to plastic compositions, even of great volume, and strong scenic impact, which evoke or recreate, in their own way, the world that is at the center of her interests: landscapes, trees, plants, branches, leaves, geological formations, pieces of vegetation, architectural structures.

They have a fairy-tale tone, at times mysterious, almost magical, and lead to reflection on various themes: intellectual processes of creation through which she expresses herself today as in the past, ecological and environmental issues, as well as the perception of the venue, which Eva Jospin’s works significantly alter both on intellectual and physical levels.

The artworks on display in Venice demonstrate this, as they not only dialogue with the historical and environmental context that welcomes them, the ancient Palazzo Pesaro, but also with the collections it houses, namely the rich and varied artistic production of Mariano Fortuny, revealing unexpected, sometimes surprising aesthetic and methodological affinities with the poetics of their interpreter. These similarities form the basis of the current project and constitute its essential reason motivating the choice of the exhibition venue.

Biography of the artist >>>

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

Image gallery: Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photos by Benoît Fougeirol. © ADAGP, Paris 

In Partnership with

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

Venice, Fortuny Museum
24 January – 10 March, 2024 *Extended to 25 March, 2024

Curated by Francesca Fabiani
In collaboration with ICCD – Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione di Roma

In 2024 Palazzo Fortuny renews its exhibition programme of contemporary photography by presenting one of its most important exponents, Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955). An artist with a multidisciplinary activity, his work, with its critical and experimental approach, addresses some crucial themes of this art such as the truthfulness of representation, the blurred boundary between reality and illusion, authoriality and authoritativeness in photography, the persuasive power of the image and its dissemination.

The exhibition Cultura di polvere is part of a larger project, the programme ICCD Artists in Residence, which every year involves the presence of a photographer commissioned to engage in a dialogue with the Institute’s collections. It is the latest step in Fontcuberta’s long documentary and aesthetic research into photographic materials.

At the ICCD, the Catalan artist has chosen to deal with some deteriorated materials, focusing in particular on a series of glass plates from the fonds of Francesco Chigi (1881-1953), reinterpreted by starting from the forms that time has created on their surfaces. In this way he questions both the photographic object itself and the subject represented. Affected by moulds, cracks and bacteria, it is transformed into a new landscape, unexpected and fascinating. The result is a series of photographs that emerge from the encounter between the physical concreteness of the material and Fontcuberta’s visionary character. These markedly original and powerful images are enhanced by the mode of display and specifically the use of light boxes.

In the space on the ground floor of Palazzo Fortuny, with its interior notable for the absence of light, a series of large backlit photographs emerge like apparitions, epiphanies of vaguely familiar yet unlikely landscapes. The setting and mode of display of the works favour the fully immersive character of the visit.

On display will be 12 works by the photographer together with some photographic plates on gelatin-coated glass from the early 20th century in the Chigi Fonds, the starting point of Fontcuberta’s work.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

Image: Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere – Trauma #3227, light box 100×150 cm, 2022 – © ICCD Roma

In Partnership with

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

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.

More information >>>

In Partnership with

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su 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.

In Partnership with

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su 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 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 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

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

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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 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 Museo Fortuny.