In 2022 Anish Kapoor will be featured in a major retrospective at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

The Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice announces a major exhibition to be presented in conjunction with the next International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, from April 20 to October 9, 2022: it will be dedicated to Anish Kapoor and will be the first British artist to be featured in a major exhibition at the Venetian museum. Originally scheduled for 2021, it has slipped by a year because of the pandemic; it will be curated by Taco Dibbits, director general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

It will be a comprehensive and wide-ranging retrospective tracing key moments in Kapoor’s career and exploring the development of his visual language. For the first time, his highly innovative new works, created using carbon nanotechnology, will be exhibited: works that further develop the language of the artist’s early sculptures, exploring the condition of what he called the ’non-object,’ works that investigate the liminal space occupied by an object, between physical presence and immateriality, something that is present but at the same time absent, empty but full.

The exhibition project is part of the larger programming of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, which has been opening its doors tocontemporary art for the past few years.

“By affinity with the museum’s collection, in the past a ”painter-painter“ has always been selected, and consequently today it might be surprising that the choice has fallen on a sculptor,” said Galleries Director Giulio Manieri Elia. “In reality Kapoor, by virtue of his original and profound research on color, light, perspective and space goes to the root of the principles of Venetian Renaissance painting, investigates its essence and succeeds in intimately dialoguing on an ideal, we could even say conceptual, level with the work of Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto.”

Kapoor’s works establish a dynamic dialogue with medieval and Renaissance art in the museum collection. Kapoor’s use of the skin of an object as a “veil” between the inner and outer world evokes the motif of the fold in Renaissance art, which serves as a boundary between body, skin and being, between the corporeal and the sacred. These investigations of the embodied subject lead to the modernity of Malevich, Newman, and Rothko. Kapoor continues this investigation with sensual and intriguing sculptures that question the status of both matter and being.

“All artists, however avant-garde and contemporary, are always in dialogue with those who came before them,” commented curator Taco Dibbits. “The Gallerie dell’Accademia is the perfect place for a modern master to explore themes that have always involved sculptors and painters. Kapoor’s latest works, using the most advanced nanotechnology, promise to be a real revelation.”

The artist himself says, “The light and space of Venice and the glories of the Accademia Galleries collection have long been a source of inspiration for me. I have grown to love this city and its painters, sculptors and architects, and I feel honored to have been invited to engage in a visual dialogue with them. I hope to add to the vocabulary of color and form that has been Venice’s gift to the world.”

Born in Mumbai, India, in 1954, Anish Kapoor is considered one of today’s most influential artists. He now lives and works in London. His work is exhibited in major permanent collections and museums around the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate in London; the Fondazione Prada in Milan; and the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Pinakothek der Moderne, in Munich, Germany (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2019); Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemorânea, in Porto, Portugal (2018); University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), in Mexico (2016); Château de Versailles, in France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, of Moscow (2015); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); Sakip Sabanci Müzesi, Istanbul (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).

Kapoor represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, at which he received the Premio Duemila. He won the Turner Prize in 1991 and has received numerous international awards, including the Praemium Imperiale in 2011 and Padma Bhushan in 2012. He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003 and the Knighthood in 2013 for his contribution in the visual arts.

He is also known for his architectural works, including Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Leviathan (2011) exhibited at Monumenta 2011, Paris; Orbit (2012), Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for the Lucerne Festival, Japan (2013-) and Descension, (2014) recently installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA (2017).

Image: left Anish Kapoor, Untitled (1992); right Anish Kapoor, Void (1989) Ph.Credit Michel Zabe ©Anish Kapoor.

In 2022 Anish Kapoor will be featured in a major retrospective at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

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