EXHIBITIONS 2015
AZIMUT/H. Continuity and Newness
September 20, 2014 – January 19, 2015
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero
The exhibition AZIMUT/H. Continuity and Newness is a tribute
to the post World War II neo-avantgarde in Italy—currently of
widespread interest to critics, curators and the general public—
and in particular to Azimut/h, the gallery and the review founded
in 1959 in Milan by Enrico Castellani (b. 1930) and Piero
Manzoni (1933–1963). The exhibition reveals Azimut/h’s central
position in the Italian and international art of the time: like a
creative earthquake it was one of the catalysts of Italian and
European visual and conceptual culture and an intellectual bridge
between a new, revolutionary generation and the most contemporary developments in art.
Different in the spelling of their titles, Azimut (the gallery) and Azimuth (the review) together
formulated ‘a new concept of art’, that thrived on the dialectic of ‘continuity and the new’. On
view are works by Manzoni and Castellani, and by artists of this period, such as Lucio Fontana,
Alberto Burri, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Heinz Mack,
Otto Piene and Günther Uecker.
Jackson
Pollock's
Alchemy.
Research
and
conservation
February 14 – April 6, 2015
Organized by Luciano Pensabene and Marco Ciatti
Considered one of the iconic paintings of the 20th
century, purchased by the art collector and dealer Peggy
Guggenheim and still today a part of her collection in Venice, Alchemy (1947) by Jackson
Pollock (1912–1956) traveled to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence in December 2013
for study and conservation, providing a rare opportunity to look closely at the painting's material
structure, and to explore the paints Pollock used and how they were applied. Over more than a
year, scholars, scientists, and conservators have examined every technical aspect of this
painting, which is one of Pollock’s first poured pictures in which he developed innovative
methods of paint application that would become the hallmark of his style. This exhibition will
illustrate the examination, conservation and cleaning of Pollock’s Alchemy, with video in 3D,
high-definition imagery and interactive tools that will make it possible to appreciate the work in
detail in its materiality and its extensive palette of 19 colors. Following the exhaustive study and
the cleaning, the exhibition will present new information about the painter and his work,
revealing an artist who combined traditional materials and methods of their application with
radically unconventional ones.
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it
Charles Pollock: A Retrospective
April 25 – September 14, 2015
Curated by Philip Rylands
The exhibition documents Charles Pollock’s full career, with most of
the material (art and documents, some of it never before exhibited)
being loaned by the Charles Pollock Archive, Paris, thanks to the
artist’s widow and daughter as well as other members of the Pollock
family. A small number of works by Jackson Pollock, Thomas Hart
Benton and a rare painting by Sanford Pollock will complement
Charles’s early years in New York and Washington. Additional loans
will come from members of the Pollock family, from the Archives of
American Art/Smithsonian Institution, and other institutions and private collections. Early
letters, photos and sketches will document the relations between Charles and Jackson.
Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible
April 25 – September 14, 2015
Curated by David Anfam
David Anfam, leading authority on Abstract
Expressionism, is curating a touring exhibition of
Jackson Pollock’s Mural (1943, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City) following its
conservation and cleaning at the Getty Conservation Institute and exhibition first at the J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and then in Sioux City, Iowa. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
will be the first European venue for this presentation of Mural, Jackson Pollock’s largest
painting and now considered by some to be the single most important American painting of the
20th century. This privilege acknowledges that Mural was commissioned in the summer of 1943
(and completed by early November the same year) by Peggy Guggenheim for her New York
apartment on East 61st Street. Dr Anfam will gather around Mural a loan exhibition which offers
an interpretation of its subject matter and locates it both in Pollock’s career (James Cuno,
director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, recently said: “This painting made a cultural shift in a
modern artist who redefined art in the 20th century”) and in the evolution of mural-scale painting
in New York in the 1940s. The exhibition will benefit from a small number of loans and from
the several paintings by Jackson Pollock in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it
V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as
Life
October 3, 2015 - January 10, 2016
Curated by Sandhini Poddar
Comprising 45 major paintings and works on
paper drawn from 30 leading public institutions
and private collections across Asia, Europe, and
the United States, this is the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of celebrated
Indian modern painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde (1924–2001). As current scholarship revisits
traditions of mid-20th-century modern art outside of the Euro-American paradigm, Gaitonde’s
work presents an unparalleled opportunity to explore Indian modern art as it played out in the
metropolitan centers of Bombay (now Mumbai) and New Delhi from the late 1940s through the
end of the 20th century. Born in Nagpur, India, Gaitonde was an artist of singular stature, known
to fellow artists and intellectuals, as well as to later generations of students and collectors, as a
man of uncompromising artistic integrity of spirit and purpose. Gaitonde began developing a
nonobjective style in the late 1950s, employing palette knives and paint rollers and often using
torn pieces of newspaper to create floating, abstract forms.
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it