Book presentation: Saturday, June 9, noon, upon invitation
Hommage to Emilio Vedova : until September 10, 2007
Less than a year after his death, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection pays tribute to the great Italian artist Emilio Vedova with the presentation on June 9 at 12 noon of the volume Vedova. Monotypes, which documents some of Vedova’s last works. The catalogue is a project of Art of The Next Century and Sandro Rumney, a grandson of Peggy Guggenheim, and includes an essay by Luca Massimo Barbero, Associate Curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Sandro Rumney, Luca Massimo Barbero and Alfredo Bianchini, President of the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation, will take part in the presentation.
A selection of these monotypes, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, are currently on display, June 1–September 10 2007, in the antechamber of Peggy Guggenheim’s collection of 20th century art at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.
This hommage tribute to Emilio Vedova, who was born in Venice in 1919 and died in October 2006, reflects the enduring nexus of two friends, Peggy Guggenheim, and Vedova, and the city of Venice. The young Vedova was the first artist, together with Giuseppe Santomaso, to meet Peggy upon her arrival in Venice in 1946. She rightfully saw in him a rising star of the European avant-garde. Two works acquired by her in the 1950s remain in the collection: Image of Time/Barrier (1958) and Città Ostaggio (1954). Today the presence of Vedova in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is enriched with the donation by the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation of the monotype Spazio Opposto (2006).
The hommage tribute to Vedova, which is made possible thanks to the generous collaboration of the Vedova Foundation, features some of the artists late monotypes created in 2005. Although technically a print, the monotype is a unique work of art whose process challenges conventional approaches to painting. It is made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface was historically a copper etching plate but in modern practice can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The image is transferred to paper by pressing the two together, by hand or by means of a press. The composition is made of liquefied colors, usually oil, but also tempera, gouache, and ink. The pigments are applied directly with a brush or in the case of Vedova, with his fingers. The monotypes of this series, entitled Opposite Space, suggest dynamic liquefied spaces that recall the reflections of the Venetian lagoons.
A charismatic figure of the Fine Arts Academy in Venice, where he was trained and taught, Vedova won numerous prizes for painting and graphic arts including the Grand Prix for Painting at the
Biennale of Venice in 1950. He established himself during the post-war period as one of the principal Italian exponents of Art informel abstraction. His interests extended beyond the conventional support to include diverse materials such as light and sound, three-dimensional collage constructions, installations and outsize suspended discs.
This celebration of the memory of Emilio Vedova at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, together with a solo-exhibition at the island of Sant’Erasmo and the hommage at the Venice Pavilion of the 52nd Biennale, will climax in the fall of 2007 with a major retrospective presented by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome.