Fortress of Bard celebrates the expressive power of Emilio Vedova's painting with an exhibition

The Fortress of Bard hosts the exhibition Questa è pittura, curated by Gabriella Belli, from November 30, 2024 to June 2, 2025, sponsored by the Fortress of Bard Association, in collaboration with 24 Ore Cultura and the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation. The exhibition intends to celebrate the expressive power of the painting of Emilio Vedova (Venice, 1919 - 2006), a leading figure in theartistic avant-garde of the 20th century, focusing on the artist’s pictorial energy and moving away from historical or socio-political interpretations to let his mastery of color and vitality of matter emerge, characteristics that make Vedova one of the most relevant exponents of theEuropean Informal movement.

Considered a free and rebellious artist, Vedova combined his talent with deep civic engagement. The exhibition presents 31 large paintings and 22 works on paper, mostly from the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation. Ten other works have been loaned from important Italian collections, including the Florentine Civic Museums, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Mart in Trento and Rovereto, and from private collections.

The exhibition itinerary, set up in the rooms of the Cannoniere, presents a thematic order that highlights significant moments of his production, starting with Room 1 - Birth of a Painter. I Maestri, which recounts Vedova’s non-academic artistic training, nourished by the works of the great Venetian masters such as Tintoretto, Veronese and Tiepolo, whom he observed as a young man among the calli and churches of the Lagoon. Room 2 - Seeking a Way is dedicated to the constructivist phase influenced by Cubism, where geometric research outlines compositions that anticipate the later abandonment of lines in favor of a more textural language. Room 3 - Abstraction Forever presents pure abstraction, expressed with gestural brushstrokes dense with pictorial matter, a language that would characterize his entire career. The exhibition continues with Room 4 - Occupy Space, where his invention of Plurimi is presented, three-dimensional works composed of wood laden with pictorial matter assembled with hinges, occupying the center of the room. In Room 5 - Letting Free the Sign Vedova’s creative process is revealed, in the preparation of the large works and in the expressive force of the small works, many previously unseen. In Room 6 - As if this pain were unbearable, the visitor is immersed in the sense of tragedy that permeates his work, an expression of an existence deeply sensitive to human tragedies. Room 7 - Vertigine Piranesi welcomes the visitor with three masterful works from the early 1980s, where the painting becomes an architecture of hallucinated forms, bumps of blood-red matter furrowed by sharply contrasting blacks, cuts and protrusions, sabers of chromatic paste that seem to evoke, in a subliminal exploration of memory, the Prisons of Piranesi, another Venetian likewise open to the deceptions of vision. Infinite Circular is the title of Room 8, three large Tondi misaligned in the center of the room show, in fearless confrontation with one of the most sacred geometric forms in art history, the circle, the restless and ingenious irreverence of an artist who has always challenged himself.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by 24 Ore Cultura.

For info: www.fortedibard.it

Hours: Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Emilio Vedova, Cycle ’62 - (B.B.6) (1962; vinyl acrylic paints, charcoal, paper and sand on canvas, 145.5 x 185.5 cm; Venice, Fondazione Emilio and Annabianca Vedova).

Fortress of Bard celebrates the expressive power of Emilio Vedova's painting with an exhibition

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