Georg Baselitz donates one of his important drawings to the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

Renowned German artist Georg Baselitz (Kamenz, 1938) has donated one of his drawings to the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice: it is the graphic work Untitled - study by Francesco Pianta, exhibited for the first time in 2019 on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition dedicated to Baselitz set up in the prestigious Venetian museum venue and curated by Kosme de Barañano. The donation testifies to the artist’s strong connection with the Galleries and Venice.

In addition to enriching the museum’s collection of twentieth-century drawings, this new acquisition represents a desire to give life to a fund of contemporary artworks, creating in the Galleries a dialogue between the works of contemporary artists and the permanent collection. Baselitz’s drawing will become part of the Cabinet of Drawings and Pr ints of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, which has 2697 ancient drawings and 1040 prints: including the well-known core of works by Leonardo da Vinci and masterpieces by Raphael, Michelangelo, Dürer, Tintoretto, Piazzetta, Canaletto and many other artists.

The work was created by the artist in 1965 in Florence, during his first six-month stay in Italy at Villa Romana. It was at that time that the first studies for the seminal series of the Helden(The Heroes) were born, but before Baselitz made a significant shift in his style, he had made drawings that still reflected the modes of the works of the early 1960s, created under the influence of Antonin Artaud and in the period of the Pandemonic Manif estos(Pandämonische Manifeste).

The sheet belongs to the series created d’après the wooden carvings made by Francesco Pianta for the Chapter House of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice between 1657 and 1676. Baselitz did not visit the lagoon city and did not see Pianta’s originals, but created his drawings from the stock of Enrico Lacchin ’s volume(Di Francesco Pianta junior. Bizzarro e capriccioso scultore in legno del barocco veneziano e dei suoi “geroglifici” nella Scuola di San Rocco, Venice, Libreria Emiliana Editrice, 1930), unearthed in Florence by an antiquarian and still in his library.

The drawings Baselitz made from Pianta in 1965 are free reinterpretations: “Baselitz visualized Pianta’s images and transformed them into rhythm. He went beyond simple copying or paraphrasing, transfiguring them into melodic and often abstract ink curves that evoke those silent carved figures, despite no longer retaining any resemblance to them,” wrote Kosme de Barañano.

“The decision to open the doors of the Galleries to the contemporary and leave a trace of it through a specific fund,” said Director Giulio Manieri Elia, "dedicated in particular to the artists who have been and who will be hosted by our institution, is connected to the origins of the Museum: when the Galleries were founded about two centuries ago, animated by the extraordinary cultural dynamism of Leopoldo Cicognara and Antonio Canova, they already aimed at enhancing the coeval artistic production alongside ancient masterpieces."

Georg Baselitz donates one of his important drawings to the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice

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