Letto etrusco, 2001 - Ph. Luca Carrà

The exhibition conceived by Pier Paolo Calzolari, with Silvio Fuso and Daniela Ferretti, and co-organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Fondazione Calzolari, opens to the public on Saturday 4 June, showcasing about thirty works realized by the artist from 1968 to present day.

The initiative provides the rare opportunity of examining the plurality of the artist’s work –considered today one of the most inventive and liveliest artist of his generation due to his ability to renovate himself throughout his over forty years of activity experimenting with the most diverse formal languages.

The show at Ca’ Pesaro – conceived as an “act of passion” resulting in a project that has become a public work – enables to retrace the adventure of an artist very much concerned with history and its vibrations, from the delicate luminous installations to the more recent and impressive combusted black salts.

The exhibition is opened by the Struttura ghiacciante(1990) set up on the waters of the Grand Canal, before the Museum’s façade, and carries on within the ample spaces of the entrance hall designed by Longhena with five works “of light and sound” – Tolomeo (1989), Baignoire (Dialogue entre l’eau et l’oeuf, 1996), Paravento (1998-1999),  Lago del cuore (Lobiforme, 1968), Spazi bianchi (1970)-, linked together by the experience of the Venetian period, and two installations, Marie chante (2002) and Colibri  (2002).

The hall on the second floor of Ca’ Pesaro hosts four large-size works featuring combusted black salt and icing structures realized between 2008 and 2011, standing out on a huge white wall before historic works such as Senza titolo (1978-1980) with the Koi carp swimming in the aquarium, Senza titolo (Materasso “Senz’altri rumori che i miei”, 1971) and a work in lead, Senza titolo (1979) from the series of the Paesaggi orientali.

Pier Paolo Calzolari, Natura morta, 2008 - Photo Paolo Semprucci

The adjacent space features two works with metronomes from the Eighties and the historic work Specchio oro portrait (1969) – a mosaic made of Judah’s tree petals – set up between the windows, whilst on the opposite wall are placed the snow-white salt dough works, and the darker shades of the combusted salt together with iron and lead; in the middle, the work Senza titolo (Io e i miei cinque ami nell’angolo della mia reale reale predica , 1969), a great U-shaped structure placed on theground and covered with moss, with three recorders that lift three feathers. In the last hall, the sculpture Senza titolo (2010) realized using many of the materials that feature in all the works by Calzolari and are part of a project still in progress.

The Catalogue is published by Gli Ori, and features a conversation with Massimiliano Gioni and a critical review by Denys Zacharopoulos, bio-bibliographic material and the complete photographical documentation of the exhibited works.