UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN VENICE, SPRING- FALL 2020

UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN VENICE

PALAZZO CINI
Piranesi Rome Basilico
June 20th – November 23rd, 2020
Opening hours
Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from h.12 am to 8 pm

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibit  “Piranesi Rome Basilico” on occasion of the 300th anniversary of Giambattista Piranesi’s birth (Venice 1720 – Rome 1778).
The show is curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Institute Art History, in collaboration with the photographic Archive Gabriele Basilico.  Born in Milan, Basilico enrolled in the Politecnico where he earned a degree in architecture, which had a profound influence in his early photography career from the late 1960’s.
He initially focussed on social and later architectural subjects, captured in their relationship with human presence and the constant evolution of the urban space.
His countless trips around the world increased his sincere concern about metropolitan areas, which became the hall mark of his style, celebrated in over 120 books and successful exhibits at Madrid, Paris, Rome and at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 2012.
In 2007 he published a photo book about Rome and its landmarks, followed by an exhibition of the most impressive Basilico’s pictures from the book.
For the first time in Venice Basilico’s twenty-six pictures of ancient roman monuments are now on display side by side, compared with twenty-five Piranesi’s etchings of the same subjects, selected from the Cini Graphic and Art Collection.
The 20th century photographer’s eye is confronted with the one of a 18th century vedutista -view painter- able to catch the timeless magnificence of those immortal buildings, triumphal arches, ornate fountains, grand staircases, and exotic obelisks.
Worth a trip, you won’t regret!

UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN VENICE, SUMMER-WINTER 2020-21

PALAZZO GRASSI
Henry Cartier-Bresson, Le Grand Jeu
Youssef Nabil. Once Upon a Dream  
July 11th, 2020 – January 10th, 2021
Opening hours
Every Saturday, Sunday and Monday from h.10 am to 7 pm

Born in Cairo, Egypt, Youssef Nabil started his career as a photographer at twenty years old in 1992, and soon decided to move to New York and Paris to work with some celebrated fashion photographers in order to improve his artistic education.

Back to his native country in 1998, he had his first solo exhibit in Cairo, but his debut in the international scene was due to the Tracey Emin, a British artist who was greatly impressed by his work and helped him achieve broad success.
Nabil’s production was praised in the article “Tomorrow people” published by Harper’s in 2001, which draw the interest of private galleries and collectors.
The Seydou Keita Prize, won in 2003 at the Biennale of African Photography in Bamako, encouraged him to leave Egypt, spend a few years in Paris, and then in New York where he still lives today.
In those years Youssef developed a very personal technique based on hand-colored gelatin silver prints, fully expressed in portraits of famous artists or painters, celebrated movie actors, international pop singers immersed in an intimate and emotional atmosphere.
In recent years Nabil became a video producer too, with his first short one You Never Left featuring the French actress Fanny Ardant about a comparison between exile and death, set in natural and historical Egyptian backgrounds.
In 2015 was released his second short film, I saved My Belly Dancer with Salma Hayek and Tahar Rahim.
It deals with the regret and nostalgia for this fascinating dance form which is progressively dying out, along with the contradictions between the striking sexualization of the female body in the Arab world and the repression of women’s emancipation movement.
Palazzo Grassi exhibit provides a comprehensive retrospective of Nabil’s work, grouped into sections according to the diverse subjects.
A unique chance to discover an international new artist.

Henry Cartier-Bresson, Le Grand Jeu is curated by five contemporary artists and art collectors, who were asked to select about 50 Cartier-Bresson pictures from 385 photos sampled by Bresson himself in 1970s as the most representative ones of his work.
As a consequence, the exhibit displays a faceted kaleidoscope of exclusive points of view, between the  aesthetic taste of Francois Pinault, Palazzo Grassi’s owner, and the ones of the photographer Annie Liebovitz, the film director Wim Wenders, the conservator Sylvie Aubenas, and the novelist Javier Cercas.
Besides the meaningful content of the images, visitors will be able to detect the intimate resonance of the curators’ choice.

UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN VENICE, SUMMER-WINTER 2020-21

PUNTA DELLA DOGANA
Untitled, 2020. Three perspectives on the art of today  
July 11th, 2020 – January 10th, 2021
Opening hours
Every Saturday, Sunday and Monday from h.10 am to 7 pm

The exhibit is curated by Muna El Fituri, Caroline Bourgeois and the artist Thomas Houseago who selected the artworks according to the inspiring interiors of Punta della Dogana, for a total of sixty pieces from the François Pinault Collection, private art galleries and international museums.
Expressive media are represented in several forms, including sculpture, site-specific installation, video, painting and photography, with the purpose of fostering emotional, visual and sensory visitor’s reactions.

UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN VENICE, SUMMER-WINTER 2020-21

ISOLA DI SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE – LE STANZE DEL VETRO CONTEMPORARY GLASS EXHIBIT

Venice and American Studio Glass
September 6th, 2020 – January 10th, 2021 Free admission

“Venice and the American Studio Glass” gives a unique chance to examine the way the Venetian glass style deeply affected the evolution of the American Studio glass from the 1960s to the present day.
The exhibit, curated by Tina Oldknow and William Warmus from Corning Glass Museum in New York, is a showcase of 155 glass vessels, sculptures, original installations made by 60 Venetian and American artists who successfully inspired each other over the decades.
The American Studio Glass made its debut in the late 1950s when ceramics and other craft media gained in interest and popularity, although masters felt the need to improve their technical skills, update the knowledge of the greatest glass traditions in the world.
Harvey Littleton was the founder of the Studio Glass movement in America, together with the glass research scientist Dominick Labino, who started a small, cheap furnace in 1962 for experimental glass artists. Some Littleton’s pupils were Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky, and Fritz Dreisbach who took new and unprecedented directions, after their educational journeys to Sweden, Czechoslovakia and especially Murano in Italy.
They learnt the potential and the technical limits of the material, and eventually subvert the traditional connection between functionality and glass, exploring unexpected sculptural forms.
The impact of the Venetian millennial legacy on American glass history was forceful and long lasting, with still unexplored aesthetic paths to develop for both countries.

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