Verona, Palazzo della Ragione
February 27 to June 3, 2010
Vernissage for the press: Friday, February 26, at 12:00 noon
A new exhibition, PastPresentFuture - The Cariverona Foundation and UniCredit Group Collections: Art for the city, will be held at the Palazzo della Ragione in Verona from February 27 to June 3. It will showcase approximately 80 works of art from UniCredit Group's corporate collection, along with eight masterpieces owned by the Cariverona Foundation. Verona will be the only Italian stop for the traveling exhibition, which was organized by both UniCredit Group and the Cariverona Foundation with the collaboration and support of the city. Verona follows the show's premier at Vienna's Bank Austria Kunstforum.
PastPresentFuture, curated by Walter Guadagnini with an exhibition design created by Stefano Gris, captures a continuity across four centuries of European art and offers a dialogue between the past, the present and notions of the future. It does so by presenting, within the exhibition's seven thematic sections, ancient and contemporary works together. Thus, viewers are encouraged to reflect on art history's traditional relationship with the world and nature, as well as representations of self, human forms and objects.
The exhibition opens with a 20th century masterpiece of Italian sculpture, the marble "Woman Swimming Underwater," made by Arturo Martini in 1941-42 and acquired by the Cariverona Foundation in 2005. Other works seen at the Verona show will include "Sandbars at Burano" by Gino Rossi, the imposing "Warsaw," created in 1960 by Emilio Vedova, and two masterpieces by Alberto Savinio and Giorgio Morandi.
The exhibition is also on display virtually at www.artcollection.unicreditgroup.eu.
The exhibition's sections
After Martini's beautiful swimmer, the "On Classic" section combines contemporary artists Candida Höfer, Olivo Barbieri and Giulio Paolini, among others, with old masters such as Van Bloemen Bamboccianti, the decadent Makart, the pictor classicus De Chirico and his brother Savinio.
Visitors then proceed to "Objects of Desire," a room in which an installation by Tony Cragg interacts with a large composition by Giuseppe Recco, while four extraordinary collages by Kurt Schwitters stand alongside Andy Warhol's famous "Flowers" and Giorgio Morandi's "Still Life."
The "Sublime and Picturesque" room is next, featuring artists such as the 17th century painter Paul Bril, the leading member of the "Barbizon School," Charles Daubigny, and contemporary artists including Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, Andreas Gursky and Hans Op de Beeck.
Next is the "Metropolis" section, which explores and develops the relationships between individuals and urban spaces through the work of some of the greatest contemporary photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Massimo Vitali, Gabriele Basilico, Fischli & Weiss, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Wolfgang Tillmans, Vincenzo Castella and Francesco Jodice. This portion of the show dovetails with the "On Geometry" section, which features works by Imi Knoebel, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Ghada Amer and others.
Representations of the human face and body are found in the "Body Talk" and "Face to Face" sections, where works are presented in dramatic combinations: a masterpiece by Antonio Donghi with a photograph of Valie Export, Vienna's star in body art; the magnificent "Psyche Abandoned by Amore" with photographs by EJ Bellocq; Girolamo Savoldo's stunning "Portrait of a Gentleman" next to nameless faces and portraits by the young Austrian artist Hans Schabus; and the rare work "The Head of John the Baptist Presented to Herod" by Giovanni Baglione with Trude Fleischmann's photograph of the death mask of Alban Berg. Equally striking is the juxtaposition of two works focused on a mirror's reflection: A photograph by Heinrich Kühn, a leading representative of Pictorialism at the turn of the 20th century, and a magnificent canvas by Cagnaccio di San Pietro from the collection of the Cariverona Foundation. The exhibition concludes with two monumental works by Richter and Vedova, in which the physique and gestures of the artists translate body language into pictures.
PastPresentFuture will be accompanied by an educational outreach project developed by the Cariverona Foundation in collaboration with the Verona city departments of Culture and Youth Policies.
All proceeds from ticket sales will be allocated to a local community project jointly identified by the Cariverona Foundation and UniCredit Group.
The commitment of Cariverona Foundation and UniCredit Group to culture
As a natural part of its activities in support of culture, the Cariverona Foundation purchases works of art. With this aim, it created the Domus Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art to demonstrate the foundation's clear desire to promote the arts and increase its collection, only a small part of which derives from the former Cassa di Risparmio. Through the purchase of paintings and sculptures of the past century, the Cariverona Foundation and the Domus Foundation have created one of Italy's largest collections of 20th century art, comprising 600 works.
UniCredit Group is among the leading European financial institutions, with roughly 10,000 branches and more than 166,000 employees in 22 countries. It has an extensive presence in Italy, Austria and Germany, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.
UniCredit Group, in addition to owning one of the most extensive art collections in Europe (60,000 works from the banks that integrated to now comprise the Group, including Germany's HypoVereinsbank and Bank Austria), promotes the dissemination of culture with initiatives for the conservation and enhancement of existing assets in the countries in which it operates, and for the promotion of young talent in the field of contemporary art.
UniCredit Group has developed an innovative cultural program model based on partnerships and the participatory management of long-term projects with major institutions in the fields of visual arts, music and literature.
For information and reservations, please contact: +39 199199111
Press Office:
Cariverona Foundation: Renzo Cocco - Tel +39 045 8057310 cocco@fondazionecariverona.org
UniCredit Group: Viviana Vestrucci - Tel +39 02 87275790 viviana.vestrucci@unicreditgroup.eu
In partnership with:
Studio ESSECI - Sergio Campagnolo, Padua info@studioesseci.net +39 049 663499
More information and pictures: www.studioesseci.net