Curated by Chiara Bertola, Curator and Manager of Contemporary Art Projects, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice

There is nothing that is superfluous, but, as in every work that is strongly aesthetic, he is simple, tense, alive. For him color is a conflict of power and his material lives by his tension, it is sensitive and luminous.

Peggy Guggenheim (Bacci, [Venice: Edizioni del Cavallino, 1958])

From April 1 through September 18, 2023, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Edmondo Bacci: Energy and Light, organized by Chiara Bertola, Curator and Manager of Contemporary Art Projects, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice. The exhibition will feature approximately eighty works—many of which have never been exhibited before—including paintings and unpublished drawings on loan from the Archivio Edmondo Bacci, as well as from private collections and international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Palm Springs Art Museum. It will be the first and most extensive retrospective dedicated to Venetian artist Edmondo Bacci (1913–1978).

The exhibition focuses primarily on the 1950s, the most lyrical and creative period of the artist's career, and when he achieved international success. Indeed, during this period, as an established exponent of Spazialismo, and among the most innovative artists of the Italian art scene, Bacci captured the attention of Peggy Guggenheim and leading art critics through the novelty of his painting, the generative force of his color, his rupture of spatial planes, and the circular rhythm of his brushstrokes. Bacci was one of the finest representatives of Venetian post-war art, together with, among others, Tancredi Parmeggiani and Emilio Vedova, who also achieved international success and acclaim. Bacci was also one of the few artists in Italy to understand the possibilities of the latest type of abstraction, merging contemporary trends in Europe and the United States with his unique and personal style. The exhibition tells this story through works that are crucial to understanding the evolution of the pictorial language of color and light that so impressed Guggenheim, as well as Alfred H. Barr Jr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art of New York, who acquired Avvenimento #13R in 1953. The work, now in the holdings of the New York museum, makes a special return to Italy, where it will be on public view for the first time.

Edmondo Bacci: Energy and Light is accompanied by a substantial illustrated catalogue, edited by Marsilio Arte, which contains essays by curator Chiara Bertola, Martina Manganello, Barry Schwabsky, Toni Toniato, and Riccardo Venturi.

Public Programs

Alongside the Edmondo Bacci: Energy and Light exhibition, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection offers a varied program of collateral events that analyze, interpret, and spread knowledge about the artist’s visual language and artistic process to the museum’s various audiences.

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Clips of Light