2016 will be dedicated to post-war art: three exhibitions, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, associate curator of the Venetian museum, with great names that have marked the national and international art scene of the twentieth century, will offer an accurate reading of three moments of Italian, European and American art, starting from the second post-war up to the end of the 70s, with a particular focus on research and artistic production that characterized our country in the 60s. Three exhibitions that also ideally retrace what was Peggy's enlightened career as patron and collector.
It begins with the imminent opening, on January 23, until April 4, of Postwar Era: A Recent History. Tributes to Jack Tworkov and Claire Falkenstein, which through a careful selection of works, some of which are rarely exhibited, collected by the patron, or donated to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection after her death, interprets a sensitivity that goes beyond artistic movements and trends. The exhibition also intends to celebrate two lesser-known artists from the permanent collection: Jack Tworkov (1900–1982), Polish-born American painter, adherent of Abstract Expressionism, and Claire Falkenstein (1908–1997), American sculptor, known for the creation of the gate of the Venetian museum, commissioned in 1960 by Peggy herself, and restored just for the exhibition. With about a hundred works, grouped together and juxtaposed according to theme, style, affinity and a less classical chronology, the exhibition itinerary moves from Abstract Expressionism to English post-war painting and sculpture, passing through informal Italian abstraction . In this context, an in-depth analysis is dedicated to the work of the abstractionist Carlo Ciussi (1930-2012).
From 23th April, until 19 September, the protagonist at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni will be Imagine. New images in Italian art 1960-1969, shows that it intends to trace the first ideal mapping of the artistic researches that characterized the 60s, especially the Rome-Turin axis, and which use a new idea of figuration and image. With about fifty works by the major protagonists of that fertile season, such as Franco Angeli, Mario Ceroli, Domenico Gnoli, Giosetta Fioroni, Tano Festa, Jannis Kounellis, Fabio Mauri, Francesco lo Savio, Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Schifano, the exhibition will offer ideas, insights, curiosities that characterize Italian art of that period, also revealing the link between tradition and contemporaneity in a generation of artists who were fundamental for our country's participation in the international avant-garde scene of the time.
Finally, in the fall, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection celebrates Tancredi Parmeggiani (1927 – 1964), a talented artist discovered by Peggy in the rich artistic scene of the 50s. Homage to Tancred (12 November 2016 – 14 March 2017) traces the Venetian beginnings and the intense pictorial production linked to the 50s by the artist from Feltre, who immediately presents herself as one of the most original characters of contemporary Italian art, and who he was also the only one, after Pollock, with whom the American collector signed a contract, intensely promoting his work and dedicating some exhibitions to him, including a memorable one-man show, right at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, in 1954.
Also worth noting on your agenda are two off-site exhibitions, created in collaboration with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection: from 19 March to 24 July, the eagerly awaited exhibition From Kandinsky to Pollock. The great art of the Guggenheims will bring over 100 works of European and American art from the 900s to Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, including several masterpieces, in a journey that reconstructs relations between the two sides of the ocean, in the name of the figures of the American collectors Peggy and Solomon Guggenheim. Rare and intense will then be, from 10 June to 9 October, the photographic exhibition Art of This Century. Peggy Guggenheim in Photographs. On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Ghetto of Venice, Ikona Gallery, historic gallery of Ziva Kraus, in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo in Venice, presents a selection of about twenty photographs, taken by some masterful interpreters of 900th century photography, such as Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Roloff Beny, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Gisèle Freund, who immortalized Peggy throughout her life.
