Dates: 4 September – 12 December
Preview: Friday September 3, 1999, 12 noon to 5.30 p.m.
Press Briefing: Friday September 3, 1999, 4 p.m.
Remarks by Jan Krugier, Thomas Krens (Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation) and Philip Rylands (Deputy Director, Peggy Guggenheim Collection)
Opening reception: Friday September 3, 1999, 6.30 p.m.
Opening September 4 (preview September 3) through December 12, 1999, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, will present THE TIMELESS EYE. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection, an exhibition of over 180 works by over 100 artists on paper sponsored by AP Italia.
Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski began collecting in 1968. Today their collection is considered one of the finest privately owned collections of its kind world-wide. This fame stems not only from its outstanding quality and historic depth. Unusual are also the criteria which, apart from quality, determined the acquisition of the individual works. With hitherto only single works exhibited at temporary exhibitions, The Timeless Eye, inaugurated in Berlin and further travelling to Madrid, marks the first public showing of the collection ever.
The Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection comprises over 400 works, ranging from the early Italian Renaissance to the present day. The 189 works by over 100 artists selected for the Venice exhibition reflect the collection’s extraordinary variety: the key periods of Italian drawing are exemplified through works by Carpaccio, Bronzino, Pontormo, del Sarto, Parmigianino, Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Tiepolo and others. Flemish and Dutch drawing is illustrated by artists such as Rubens, Rembrandt and Jordaens. Particular emphasis has been given to French drawing, especially to the 19th century with entire groups of works by Ingres, Delacroix, Géricault, Degas, Seurat and Cézanne. Earlier French examples include drawings by Poussin, Boucher, Fragonard, Watteau and David. Another important feature of the exhibition is the 20th century, with fourteen works on paper by Picasso and six by Klee, as well as single drawings and watercolors by Bonnard, Beckmann, de Chirico, De Kooning, Ernst, Giacometti, Léger, Kandinsky, Macke, Matisse and Schlemmer.
All of these works reflect the collectors’ personal selection criteria. Rather than concentrating on different categories, such as preparatory drawings or specific subjects, or on single centuries or national schools, Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski have focussed on the three primary techniques of graphic visualization: line, modelling and chiaroscuro. Often interrelated, these are nonetheless given different weight in the methods and styles of artists through the ages. The subtle modelling of an anatomatical study by Rubens is achieved by the finest linear hatching, while Rembrandt’s study of women standing in a doorway is a pure essay in the contrast of light and dark. These two contemporary works have less in common than Gozzoli and Picasso, when each uses an austere meandering line to shape the figure of a seated man or an old man’s head. Such considerations give force to the title of the Venice exhibition, THE TIMELESS EYE, which was chosen in conversation between Jan Krugier and the curator Philip Rylands. It also underlies the initial choice, made by Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, to hold this exhibition in Venice, at the Italian branch of the Foundation, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Krens commented: “Peggy Guggenheim’s first love was the Italian Renaissance: she read Berenson’s ‘Florentine Painters’ at ten-yearly intervals throughout her life. This outstanding collection of drawings brings works by the great masters of five centuries to the Collection for the first time. It is especially meaningful for the Guggenheim that the collection is so strong in nineteenth century drawings, including French post-Impressionism. The revelation of the enduring, timeless values of the skills and expressive means used by artists as they committed their hand to paper provides after all a rich context for appreciating the changing tastes, subjects and priorities of the art history that lies behind the Modernism presented in Peggy Guggenheim’s collection of 20th century masterpieces.”
With the exhibition title ‘Linie, Licht und Schatten’, the Krugier-Poniatowski collection was first presented in Berlin at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Nationalgalerie Berlin in collaboration with the Gallery Krugier, Geneva (May 29 - August 1, 1999). After Venice, the collection will travel to Fundación Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (February 2 – May 14, 2000) and to the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva (2001).
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, written and edited by the staff and curators of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Berlin Nationalgalerie, with additional writing by several scholars for those drawings that have been added to the Venice exhibition. It also includes an illustrated catalogue raisonné of the entire collection. (Published by G & H Verlag, Berlin; 434 pages; available in Italian, English and German editions. Price: Lit. 110.000).
The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the support of Automotive Products Italia.
Official carrier: Alitalia
The cultural programs of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection are made possible by the support of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Advisory Board, the Regione Veneto and Intrapresæ Collezione Guggenheim.