Venice, at the Museo Correr, Fabio Zonta's photographs interpreting the art of Canova

From Oct. 29, 2022, to Feb. 5, 2023, the Museo Correr in Venice is hosting the exhibition Canova and Venice 1822-2022, an exhibition showcasing the works of Fabio Zonta (Bassano del Grappa, 1958), one of the greatest interpreters in photography of Canova’s art. The exhibition, curated by Andrea Bellieni and Camilla Grimaldi, is staged to mark the bicentenary of the death of Canova, who passed away in Venice on Oct. 13, 2022. Canova’s place in Venice par excellence, the Museo Correr preserves many of Canova’s works linked to the city, the result of mutual esteem and gratitude between the sculptor and the intelligent patricians who had initiated him to greatness in art, the last Venetian of a centuries-old glorious tradition, but also the first of an Italy and Europe not yet born, but already “in power.”

At the Correr, Canova is also celebrated by Venice for his merits felt by the citizens with even pre-Risorgimento value, for the return to the lagoon of so many works of art taken by the Napoleonic (such as the Horses of St. Mark or the Winged Lion of the Column). After the critical twentieth-century oblivion of Canova’s art, permanently erased by a historic exhibition held precisely in the halls of the Correr in 1992, the recent exhibition rearrangement of the sculptures in a new arrangement aimed to honor the genius of the “modern Phidias”: this was a complex operation carried out in 2015 by the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia with the essential support of the Venice International Foundation association and its project Sublime Canova.

As a further tribute, now comes the exhibition that rereads and reinterprets Canova’s sculptures through the eye of Fabio Zonta, a photographic artist. Born in 1958 in Bassano del Grappa where he lives and works, Zonta began his career at a very young age, in Milan in 1977 in the Publifoto agency, working with some of the best-known international photographers of the time. After many years of collaborations with important architecture and design magazines and some significant architects, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun and Ettore Sottsass (to remain in the Central European area), he began an autonomous research path with the book Palingenesi and concretized in numerous solo and group exhibitions, in Italy and abroad: the most recent, in chronological order, is the one that brought the Canovian photographs to the Museo Civico of Asolo until last October 9. Now, therefore, the images of the Bassano photographer are taking the road to the lagoon for a new tribute to Canova.

“Venice,” emphasizes MuVe Foundation President Mariacristina Gribaudi, “celebrates in this October 2022 the second centenary of the death of the great sculptor Antonio Canova. The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, in agreement with the Municipal Administration, intends to dutifully participate in the important anniversary by contributing to it with the prominence due to the imperishable memory of the man who, if he was the last great artist of the Serenissima, was also the first greatest of an Italy and a Europe not yet born, but already clearly ’in power.’ From Venice, Canova’s precious artistic legacy to humanity today stands out above all from the bright halls of the Museo Correr that preserve his works; those same works that so many Venetians - starting with those patricians who first fostered the genius and fortune of the young man who came to the lagoon from the foothills of Treviso - first had for themselves, but then generously found their way to the City, to the site of ’his’ Museum. Works ideally remounted with fascinating setting in recent years (2015) by this Foundation with the help of the generous patronage of Venice International Foundation. For this important celebration the same fine synergy of the public side with private patronage is renewed in the name of Canova. This is done in order to organize the exhibition at the Correr, a short distance from and almost next to the original masterpieces, which restores to us the sublime art of the sculptor mediated by the faithful, respectful, yet personal and fascinating visual interpretation of photographer Fabio Zonta. Even through the images captured by Zonta’s lens, bathed in a disturbing revelatory light, Canova returns to emanate universal saving beauty for us. To Canova who, on the morning of Oct. 13, 1822, a few meters from the Correr Museum, left his Venice and the world, honor and gratitude.”

“Venice, through the Civic Museums,” says Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, “pays homage to Canova, an artist whom our city welcomed when he was just 9 years old and who became, for him, the place where he not only managed to find fertile ground for the creation of his first important and famous works, but also the place where he returned to end his earthly existence and die on October 13, 1822, in fact. Celebrating him on the bicentennial since his death means honoring the spirit of our land and that ability to be able to look beyond, to be able to innovate, to be able to put oneself on the line typical of a people who found in the Most Serene Republic the conditions to be able to express themselves and to be able to measure themselves.”

“We need art and culture,” highlights Luca Bombassei, President of Venice International Foundation. “The art of yesterday and today. And seeing next to the works of Canova - displayed in the installation we financed in 2015 - the photographs of Fabio Zonta becomes an operation of testimony and at the same time a new step in the sign of modernity.”

On the occasion of the bicentenary of Antonio Canova’s death, alongside his works, the Museo Correr will also feature the exhibition Le medaglie canoviane, with a wide selection of valuable medals related to the figure, work and memory of the great sculptor.

Venice, at the Museo Correr, Fabio Zonta's photographs interpreting the art of Canova

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