The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia are opening the celebrations marking the centennial of futurism – that will have its climax in the great exhibition at the Correr in June 2009 – with an invaluable foretaste, dedicated to Fortunato Depero (1892-1960).

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Fedrizzi family, who not only agreed to the collection, belonging to Giuseppe Fedrizzi (1918-1979) and amassed over the years during his friendship with the artist and his wife Rosetta, but who have also agreed to leave it to the Venice Civic Museums, as a long-term loan to Ca’ Pesaro.

Fortunato Depero (1892- 1960)
Ritmi veneziani, 1924
tarsia di stoffe colorate, cm 83×81,5
It includes over eighty works created between 1914 and 1956 – oils, temperas, ink and charcoal drawings, collages, advertising sketches, intarsia in wood and coloured fabrics, furnishing projects – with famous masterpieces such as the Bolted Book (1927) or Nitrito in Velocità [Speeding Nitrite] (1922), and unpublished works that document Depero’s multimedia approach, in a completely absorbing vision of artistic expression and in a context of global opening to all kinds of experiences, within and beyond futurism.

When he did not pass the entrance test to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, he began working as a sculptor. He moved to Rome in December 1913 where he met Balla, Cangiullio, Marinetti and Sprovieri. In March 1915, together with Giacomo Balla, he published the Ricostruzione Futurista dell’Universo [Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe] in which they projected Futurism in life, beyond painting and sculpture, and towards the applied arts. In 1916 he met the Russian ballet entrepreneur Diaghilev, who visited his atelier and commissioned stage sets and costumes with plasticity for the Song of the Nightingale with music by Stravinsky and Il giardino zoologico [The Zoological Garden] by Cangiullo with music by Ravel, which were never performed. During that period he also met the ballerino Massine, the poet Cocteau and countless artists, including Picasso, Larionov and Gontcharova. He met the Swiss poet Gilbert Clavel with whom he went to Capri in 1971, illustrating the tale Un istituto per suicidi [Suicide’s Institute]; in the same year he also prepared plays and in 1918, in collaboration with Clavel the Balli Plastici [Plastic Dances], a marionette play that was performed in Rome, with five items, with music by Casella, Malipiero, Bartok and Tyrwhitt.
In 1919 he opened the Casa d’Arte Depero [House of Futurist Art] in Rovereto where he produced objects of applied art, fabric intarsia and collages. During the same period he also made interior decorations and furnishings, for example that of the Cabaret del Diavolo [the Devil’s Cabaret].
In 1925, together with Prampolini and Balla, he represented Italy at the International Exposition in Paris. Two years later he published Depero Futurista 1913-1927 (Bolted Book), the first example of a Futurist book-object.

Born in Fondo (Val di Non) in 1892, Fortunato Depero moved to Rovereto with his family where he attended the Scuola Reale Elisabettina, in a middle-European atmosphere that awakened diverse stimuli, ranging from irredentist ambitions to the echoes of the nascent futurist revolution.Fortunato Depero (1892-1960)
Biscotti Unica Torino, 1927 ca.
china su carta, cm 37×28,5
In September 1928 he went to New York where he was very active in the sectors of theatre stage design and advertising. In 1930 he returned to Italy and between ’31 and ’36 he founded and directed the magazine Dinamo [Dynamo], published the Liriche radiofoniche [Radio Lyrics] as well as taking part in numerous national and international exhibitions.
In 1940 he published his autobiography, Fortunato Depero nelle opera e nella vita [So I think, So I paint].
He returned to the United States in 1947, where he was to stay for two years.
In 1951 he took part in the IX Milan Triennale with a room dedicated to his work, and in 1952 he exhibited his works in the Sala dei Maestri at the XXVI Venice Biennale. He then completed the decorations for the Sala del Consiglio Provinciale in Trento (1953-56). In 1955 he participated in the VII Rome Quadriennale and the following year, together with the Rovereto City Council, he began work on the Galleria Permanente and Depero Museum, an institution that now has over 3,000 exhibits, including paintings and drawings, around 7,500 manuscripts and an extensive library on Futurism. The museum was opened in 1959. In the same year he exhibited his work at the exhibition held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first futurist manifesto. He died in Rovereto in 1960.
From 1 November 2008 to 1 March 2009
Museo Correr, daily 9am-5pm (last entrance at 4pm)
Exhibition ticket 5 €, reduced 3 €

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                     This incredibile palace was built at the end of the 16th century by the pupils of Renaissance architect Jacop Sansovino. The future Pope Clement XIII was born in this palazzo in 1693. The palace is over 4,000 square feet, with 20 foot ceilings and has the utmost breathtaking views you could possibly ask for in Venice, directly overlooking the Grand Canal from its prestigeous floor, the piano Nobile.

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       From October 01 2008 to February 09 2009
Carlo Cardazzo - A new vision for art

2008 is an important year for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection: the 60th anniversary of the Peggy collection in Venice. An exhibition dedicated to the Venetian artist Carlo Cardazzo entitled A new vision for art was scheduled for this important event from November 1, 2008 to February 9, 2009.

This is the first exhibition fully dedicated to Carlo Cardazzo that documents the variety of this eclectic artist’s interests: patron of the arts, benefactor, collector, publisher and gallerist. In fact, his Galleria del Cavallino opened in Venice in 1942

In the contemporary art world following the Second World War, few personalities matched the enterprise and volcanic curiosity of the Venetian Carlo Cardazzo. His history and works place him, like Peggy Guggenheim, among the pioneers in contemporary art promotion. Thanks to new archival research coordinated by the curator, Luca Massimo Barbero, unpublished materials and unknown facts have emerged which locate him in a surprisingly international context.

Information and tickets

Times:
10 AM - 6 PM;
closed Tuesdays
(times may vary, phone to confirm)

Debut: October 31, 2008

Collezione Peggy Guggenheim
Dorsoduro 701 (30123)
Tel.: (+39) 0412405411
Event phone: (+39) 041 2405404
Fax: (+39( 0415206885
info@guggenheim-venice.it
www.guggenheim-venice.it

Tickets:
10 Euro;
8 Euro for senior citizens over 65,;
5 Euro students;
free for children 0 - 10

     Marco Polo was born in Venice in 1254 into a family of merchants. The father Nicholas and his uncle Matthew had already made a long journey for commercial purposes between 1260 and 1269 in Central Asia until the city of Bukhara. In that place, far more than 5000 kilometers from their hometown, they had stayed for 3 years by continuing their trades. Until the dignitaries of the Great Kublai Khan contacted them, inviting them to meet their lord, the Emperor of China. The Polo brothers went to Persia and then across China to Beijing, where they met, finally, the Great Khan. Kublai was the grandson of Genghis Khan, but did not have the same spirit of fierce warrior. He asked the two brothers to deliver a letter to the Pope with a request that 100 monks were sent to convert the Mongols to Christianity. The two brothers returned to their hometown after a long journey, but the demands of the Great Khan were not heard by the Pope.

The brothers Polo then decided to take another trip to China but this time accompanied by the young Marco who was only 17 years old. They set in November 1271, Marco Polo could not imagine that his trip would last 24 years. The three Venetians had many adventures and dangers to face, it takes 30 months to arrive in China for some stretches along the Silk Road. Marco Polo got in S. Giovanni d’Acri, and then went on to Persia, then to the highlands of the Pamir, Turkmenistan, the Gobi Desert and was finally in Beijing where he was welcomed with all the honors by Kublai himself. The Great Khan was in sympathy with Marco Polo. At the Great Khan service for 17 years, Marco Polo had a great opportunity to travel along China while the father and his uncle continued their trade. He could know so distant lands such as Tibet, Siam, Burma and the Indochinese peninsula as well as many Chinese provinces. He was able to speak five Asian languages correctly. After all those years spent away from home Marco Polo asked several times for permission to return, but it was always denied. Finally got the big opportunity. Kublai entrusted to him one last task: to accompany to Persia a princess that had to marry the king of that Country. It was prepared a fleet of 14 ships that departed in January 1292 from the port of Zadon, Marco spent nearly two years to get there. Marco Polo sailed to the coast of China, then down to Indochina, Malaysia, Sumatra and India. He arrived in Ormuz and from there reached Tabriz, Trabzon, Istanbul and finally Venice. The three travelers were not recognized when returned, too much time had elapsed since their departure. But finally they were celebrated and honored by their family for the wealth that had brought from China.

 After returning Marco Polo continued its merchant activities, until in 1298 he was made prisoner by the Genoese army in the naval battle of Korcula. The period of imprisonment of Marco Polo was only one year, but was for him a fortune. Marco Polo knew in prison Rustichello da Pisa to which dictated “The Million” , the book that would have handed down in history as the greatest traveler of all time. In this book, he told his extraordinary adventures and described the places he had visited during his long journey. For many he was not believed. At that age was not easy to imagine that could be real the “stone burning” (coal) or the “black water that burns” (oil). However Christopher Columbus almost two centuries later was inspired by Marco Polo. He was convinced that it could reach the great sea of China (Pacific Ocean) traveling to the West, and ended up arriving in a continent (America), which was unaware of its existence. Who asked him to retract his allegations of forgery, Marco Polo said that he had not told even half of what he had seen. Marco Polo died in Venice in 1324.

Il Milione

On their return from China in 1295, the family settled in Venice where they became a sensation and attracted crowds of listeners who had difficulties believing their reports of distant China. According to a late tradition, since they did not believe him, Marco Polo invited them all to dinner one night during which the Polos dressed in the simple clothes of a peasant in China. Shortly before the crowds ate, the Polos opened their pockets to reveal hundreds of rubies and other jewels which they had received in Asia. Though they were much impressed, the people of Venice still doubted the Polos.

Marco Polo was later captured in a minor clash of the war between Venice and Genoa, or in the naval Battle of Curzola, according to a dubious tradition. He spent the few months of his imprisonment, in 1298, dictating to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, a detailed account of his travels in the then-unknown parts of China.

His book, Il Milione (the title comes from either “The Million”, then considered an extremely large number, or from Polo’s family nickname Emilione), was written in Old French, a language Polo did not speak, and entitled Le divisament dou monde (”The description of the world”). The book was soon translated into many European languages and is known in English as The Travels of Marco Poloo. The original is lost and there are now several often-conflicting versions of the translations. The book became an instant success — quite an achievement at a time when the invention of the printing press was two hundred years away in Europe.

The exhibition involves all three floors of the museum. It forms an integral part with the permanent collection of materials relating to Fortuny and with the exhibition of ‘guest works’. These latter are by contemporary artists and are on show here for a short time – a perfect example of the on-going experimentation that has been a key part of the museum since its re-opening.

On the ground floor is a re-construction of Isabelle de Borchgrave’s studio. Visitors will be able to see her long linen-covered worktable, together with various models, drawings and tools of the trade. And, of course, there is the paper itself – in its initial state or partially worked. The material itself is used to make simulacra of pots, paintbrushes, clothing irons, scissors, etc.

On the first floor, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘illusion’. The Salon is full of finely-pleated robes draped in precious veils, damasks and silks. These are Fortuny-inspired designs which Isabelle has incredibly recreated in paper. In the other rooms are other references to Fortuny’s life – the mentions of his art in the works of D’Annunzio or Proust, his work in the theatre and (within the Library) a curious trompe-l’oeil creation.
On the second floor is an extraordinary tent inspired by those to be seen in the Middle East. However, all the effects of rich embroidery and lace work are actually in paper! This again evokes Fortuny’s interest in that type of artistic language. Isabelle’s paper recreations of dress designs form a dialogue with the ‘real’ Fortuny designs and fabric prints on the walls and with the works that are currently ‘guests’ of the Museum.

Including clothes, accessories and trompe-l’oeil creations, the eighty-plus pieces in this show are all made of paper by the Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave (Bruxelles, 1947).
The exhibition also offers an unusual account of the world of Mariano Fortuny, with the evocative works organised within his palazzo-museum to illustrate episodes in his life and his significance for figures such as D’Annunzio and Proust. Spread over all three floors of the Museum, it comprises a number of three-dimensional models and the recreation of atmospheric settings.

Conjuring up the climate within which Fortuny lived and worked, this ‘exhibition-installation’ reflects all the various facets of the talent of a contemporary artist who is also a designer, and director. It reveals the different ways in which she has been inspired by Mariano Fortuny’s intellectual heritage and by the museum which perpetuates it.

ISABELLE DE BORCHGRAVE

Artistic Career
Born in Brussels in 1946, Isabelle de Borchgrave has had a passion for drawing from a very early age. At 14 she enrolled for the graphic arts courses at the Brussels Centre of Decorative Arts, where she would also explore different techniques in painting. She first entered the world of fashion and textile design at the age of 17, painting upon the fabric of her own clothes and those of her friends.
Enjoying growing success, she soon decided to open her own fashion atelier, La Tour de Bébelle, where she produced not only clothes and scarves but also jewellery and accessories. These used painted silk, leather, camel skin and felt, with the artist exploring the possibilities offered by a whole range of materials: at night she printed the fabrics, during the day they were made up into the creations intended for her ever more demanding clientele.
Having used the off-cuts of fabric to make cushions and curtains, she then gradually moved away from fashion to work in the field of textile and furnishings design. Continuing to use the name La Tour de Bébelle, she would create various ranges of household linen and table porcelain, as well as a number of collections of printed fabrics.
In 1998 came another change; after seeing the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at the Metropolitan in New York, she decided to create the show Papiers à la Mode in Mulhouse.
The first show, with some 30 garments, would gradually be added to as the exhibition travelled to different countries. In 2002 the event was in Japan, a country eager to learn as much as possible about the art and history of the West. For that occasion, Isabelle took contemporary portraits as the inspiration for her paper recreation of the costumes of such historical figures as Elizabeth I of England, Marie Antoinette, Madame Pompadour and the Empress Eugénie. A year later, in Turkey, she created a sort of harem, with a single female costume (inspired by a Liotard painting) surrounded by a number of male kaftans. Having abandoned fabric for paper, Isabelle discovered in this new material endless possibilities for experiments in original artistic creation.
The show as held in Paris and at the ModeNatie in Antwerp also saw important innovations. Rather than being paper illustrations of the history of fashion, they became veritable installations, the ‘set design’ serving to convey aesthetic sensations and historical information.
This Palazzo Fortuny show sets Isabelle a new challenge: how to respond to – and convey – the atmosphere of the world in which Mariano Fortuny dreamt and worked.

Venice is setting its sights on its pesky pigeons again after new reports showed the risks the birds pose to its health and heritage.

”We must do more to get rid of these troublesome animals,” local councillor Alberto Mazzonetto told ANSA.

The pigeon population of St Mark’s Square has been reduced from an estimated high of 20,000 to barely a thousand, authorities claim.

The blitz began in May, when the lagoon city banned the vendors who sold grain to tourists wanting to feed the birds.

Pigeons were eating away at centuries-old statues and buildings by pecking at nooks and crevices to reach for scraps of food that had lodged inside. Their highly acidic droppings also damage brickwork and marble.

“Just a few months after the feed ban most of the square is free of the animals who have moved off to find food on the islands,” said Renata Codello, Venice’s superintendent of architectural and cultural heritage.

The pigeons had “almost completely disappeared” from the Doge’s Palace, once their favourite place to gather, she added.

The battle against the birds is part of a wider campaign, launched in 2005, to improve the decorum of tourists and restore the image of the city, a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Last year, stewards began patrolling St Mark’s Square and other popular sites reprimanding tourists who discarded food wrappers and other litter, dangled their feet in canals and fountains or walked around bare-chested.

The city’s guardians also hailed the success of an experiment in which a corner of St Mark’s Square, the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, was cordoned off to prevent it being littered or used by people sleeping rough.

“For the first time in years one of the most beautiful places in the city isn’t full of rubbish,” said Augusto Salvadori, Venice’s municipal councillor for tourism.

The Festa della Salute is probably the least “touristy” of the Venetian festivities and evokes strong religious feelings among the city’s inhabitants.

The holiday is, like the Redentore, in memory of another bout of pestilence, which lasted for two years from 1630-31, and the subsequent vow by the Doge to obtain the intercession of the Virgin Mary.

Even today, thousands of inhabitants visit the main altar of the imposing Salute Church on November 21 to give thanks, and a strong symbolic tie remains between the city and the Virgin Mary.

A magic atmosphere Those who are in Venice on the day of the Salute can experience a sincere and heart-felt atmosphere that is religious without being bigoted and is closely connected to the history and tradition of the city.

Lengthy queues of people crossing the votive bridge and reaching the majestic Church of the Salute on November 21 bear witness to the city’s intense relationship with the Madonna to this day.
  The votive bridgeEvery year for the Salute, a temporary bridge is built on boats crossing the Grand Canal, connecting the area of San Moisè and S. Maria del Giglio (in the Saint Mark neighbourhood) with Longhena’s basilica (in the Dorsoduro neighbourhood).

Tens of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to pay homage to the Madonna and to light a candle asking her to keep them in good health.
  Between the sacred and the profane Even nowadays the festivities surrounding the Salute offer a mixture of emotions: on the one hand is the sincere religious sentiment and on the other is the more secular and playful side.

The procession of believers lighting candles to the Madonna passes stalls selling sweets, coloured balloons and toys: the two aspects of the festivity are thus perfectly entwined.

HISTORY

Venice before 1630 In the first decades of 17th century, from many points of view, Venice was having some problems: economic (ruthless competition from the French, English and Flemish merchants), political (alliance with France, tension with Spain and even greater problems with the Papacy, resulting in the Interdict) and military (the war against the Uscocchi pirates for hegemony on the Adriatic and the war for the succession of Mantua).

Venice began to take on a different role in the balance of European politics, and was certainly more in the background than in previous centuries.

It is in this context that, 54 years after the terrible plague of 1575-77, the disease gripped the city once more, taking tens of thousands of victims.
 
  The plague As well as military defeat, the War of Mantua brought Venice the plague.

The city found itself paralysed once again: traffic diminished, the nobility took refuge in their country homes, and the population was greatly reduced, roaming the city asking for charity.

Yet once again the government acted with decision and firmness: it coordinated the disinfecting of the city, sequestered entire neighbourhoods, set up the quarantine hospitals and buried the infected dead under lime. Unfortunately, not even these sanitary measures could halt the spread of the disease.
 
  The quarantine hospitals In 1423 Venice became the first state to have a special building for treating people with infectious diseases. The island of S. Maria di Nazareth was chosen as the ideal site for containing disease and guaranteeing isolation.

The isolation hospital was a place of both prevention and cure, where the ill were treated and where much attention was paid to separating the sick from the convalescents and the “suspected ill”.

The birth of the quarantine hospitals is testimony to the Republic’s revolutionary acts regarding hygiene.
 
  Impotence and superstition The atmosphere in Venice was of dejection and lack of faith. In this climate of fear it is easy to understand the Venetians’ suspicion that the plague had been deliberately caused by “plague-spreaders”.

Some French people were suspected of spreading the illness, but this merely shows the Venetians’ psychological state after succumbing to the terrible disease so soon after the epidemic of the late 1500s.

It should be mentioned that Milan was ravaged by the plague during the same period, as described by Manzoni in “The Betrothed”, and there were trials against suspected plague-spreaders. At such times there is always room for superstition and fanaticism.
  The vow In spite of strict sanitary measures the plague did not seem to decline and so the Senate turned to divine help once more.

On October 22, 1630, Doge Nicolò Contarini made a public vow to erect a church called the Salute, asking for the Virgin Mary’s divine intercession to rid the city of the plague. The first stone was laid with the plague still raging through the city and the church was consecrated in 1687.
 
  The end of the plague 
In November, 1631, the plague was definitively eradicated, but at a terrible cost: almost 47,000 died in the city (more than a quarter of the population) and 95,000 in the so-called Dogado, comprising Murano, Malamocco and Chioggia.

The Building
The palace was the ancient residence of the bishops of Torcello. It was originally a patrician’s palace in typical Flamboyant Gothic style, and then in 1659 it became the residence of Bishop Marco Giustinian who later bought the property and donated it to the Torcello diocese. This was the period when extensive rebuilding was carried out, based on plans by Antonio Gaspari. When in 1805 the Torcello diocese was abolished, the palace passed into the hands of the Venice Patriarchate which in turn sold it to the Murano Municipality in 1848, and it became the town hall. When the museum and archives were established in 1861, they were both housed in the central room on the first floor.
However, the rapid and steady growth of the collection made it necessary to find more space and so gradually the museum occupied the whole building.
After the autonomous Murano Municipality was abolished in 1923 and was\annexed to Venice, the museum became part of the Venice Civic Museums.
Today, the ceiling of the large central room (or portego) on the first floor overlooking thr Grand Canal in Murano testifies the original splendour of the palace with an 18th century fresco by Francesco Zugno (1709 - 1789) depicting the allegory of the Triumph of San Lorenzo Giustinian, the first patriarch of Venice (1381 - 1455), ancestor of the family which radically altered the building in the 17th century. Francesco Zanchi (1734 - 1772) also collaborated with Zugno by completing his work with architectural details. The frieze with the coat of arms of Murano families is modern.
Of the three large chandeliers, the central one with 60 branches deserves particular attention.It was made by Giovanni Fuga and Lorenzo Santi and presented at the first Murano Glass Exposition in 1864 where it was awarded a gold medal.

The origins of venetian glassmaking
Up to now it has been impossible to establish precisely when the Venice glassmaking industry first began.
One of the likely theories links its earliest production to the period when the Veneto people moved to the estuary islands after having lived in flourishing Roman coastal towns on the Adriatic ( from Adria to Altino) and where they had learned Roman glassmaking techniques.
A document witnessed by a notary dating from 982 was signed by a certain Domenico who was a “fiolario”, that is he made blown glass, mainly producing bottles known as “fiole”.
The only evidence of Venetian glassmaking consists of fragments found in 1961-62 together with the remains of a furnace during excavations in the “Piazza” of Torcello.
Fragments have also been discovered in the Murano subsoil ( the church of San Donato) as well as in the lagoon itself.
More recently, between 1992-93 during excavations at Malamocco ( a small place on the Lido), some ceramic fragments certainly dating from between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century were brought to light, together with two truncated cone-shaped beakers and a rounded long-necked bottle dating from the same period as those on display in this room.
During the 12th-14th centuries the art of glassmaking certainly developed through contact with East, particularly Syria, Egypt and the Eastern Roman Empire as a consequence of wars and commercial enterprises.
As is documented, it is certain that from the last 20 years of the 13th century until about the mid - 14th century there was the art of anamelling on glass in Murano (Gregorio da Napoli, Bartolomeo da Zara, Donino).
In the 13th century the glassmakers had a statute drawn up in latin which laid down the regulations that controlled the activities of the guild.
In 1441 it was rewritten in the vernacular and was called the “Mariegola dell’Arte dei Verieri de Muran”.
In the Mariegola (or Matricola” there were rules which covered all the phases of glassmaking - from production to selling, taxes and the relations between the owners, glass masters and other workers in the factory.