GEORG BASELITZ & EMILIO VEDOVA AT GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC
SALZBURG VILLA KAST
May 23, 2015 – July 11, 2015
GEORG BASELITZ & EMILIO VEDOVA AT GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC
SALZBURG VILLA KAST
May 23, 2015 – July 11, 2015
It is with great pleasure that we announce the collaboration
between the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova and the Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac. Our first joint project will be a double exhibition combining a new
series of works by Georg Baselitz with works from the 1980s by Emilio Vedova.
The Venetian painter Emilio Vedova (1919-2006) was one of the most
prominent representatives of Italian informel. He first took part in the Venice
Biennale in 1947, and devoted his whole life to the development of
non-representational painting. Works by Vedova were shown at exhibitions
including the legendary documenta exhibitions I, II and III (1955, 59 and 64)
in Kassel. By the end of the 1950s, Vedova had become established in the
international art scene as a classic of abstract painting.
From the beginning of the 1980s, Vedova became an important
integrative figure for an up-and-coming generation of neo-expressive artists –
as was demonstrated in 1982 by his renewed participation in documenta (7), as
well as by many publications and solo exhibitions in the ensuing years.
"The central contrast between the two non-colours black and
white is a decisive characteristic of Vedova's œuvre [...]. This polarisation,
later often complemented by
a further strong colour such as red or blue, complies with an inherent wish for
clarity of expression, and prevents blurring into diverse nuances. Moreover,
the black levels enhance the intensity of the overall effect, defining the
formal orientation, which might otherwise easily be obscured by colour
values" (Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, 1986). In this context, the contrast with
American-style Abstract Expressionism is interesting: while Jackson Pollock,
for instance, introduced in his Drippings a neutralising element, so that the
work in its overall structure could be continued indefinitely, Vedova remains
at the centre of the picture, the dimensions of which are always accessible to
him, in keeping with the size of his own body. Characteristic of Vedova's
painting is l’ubiquità del centro, the omnipresent centre.
This concentration on the centre is also an important aspect of
Georg Baselitz's new series Ma grigio. "Each picture shows two pairs of
legs, vaguely suggested in blurred shades of grey on a black ground, attempting
a wild but spasmodic dance. They are cut off above the calves, and the feet are
in high-heeled shoes. This 'windmill commotion', alternating between cheerful
exuberance and expressionless staccato, is abruptly stopped, since the edges of
the pictures prevent uninterrupted rotation. Here Baselitz pushes the abstraction
of the figurative to a new level. If previously, despite alterations, the unity
of the figure was to a certain extent retained, here it has become obsolete. It
can no longer be made to fit a definable form with some relation to reality;
the individual parts become ciphers for a purely notional idea. The centre of
the picture, where the legs would have to collide, remains vague, sometimes
lightly
covered by pale grey, runny streaks of paint, sometimes appearing
like a dark opening" (Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, 2015).
Baselitz’s unusual chain of association for this series ranges from
Lucio Fontana's Attese pictures dating from the 1950s and '60s, through Gustave
Courbet's provocative painting L'Origine du monde (1866), right up to the
Mexican dancers and Frida Kahlo. On the other hand, this series is based on
Baselitz's intensive reflection on the "problem of the empty centre"
in scenes of the Annunciation from past centuries.
The foot, the dominant (and isolated) element in the new series,
has been a leitmotiv in Baselitz's work since the 1960s. The disembodied feet
reminiscent of Théodore Géricault, the feet crammed into tiny shoes in the New
Types, Edvard Munch's feet in the series Spaziergang ohne Stock [Walking
without a stick], the huge cowboy boots, the high heels of the recent
monumental wood and bronze sculptures, and so on. "Feet are my earth wire.
For me the earth connection is more important than the transmission. For me the
reception via an earth wire is much better than through an antenna – perhaps I've
got more in common with the trolls than the angels, who knows? Funnily enough,
I also paint crouched down; I walk across the paintings" (Georg Baselitz,
2006).
Baselitz and Vedova first met in Berlin in the early 1960s. At that
time, Vedova had received a grant from the DAAD [German Academic Exchange
Service] and was working on his 7-part installation Absurd Berlin Diary, in
line with Dadaist examples. Baselitz and Vedova shared not only a
long-standing, intensive friendship, but also appreciation of each other's
artistic approach. Baselitz had already purchased a work by Vedova in 1957,
through the Galerie Springer, which represented both artists and held Vedova's
first solo exhibition in Berlin that year. Baselitz recounts: "I bought a
picture by Emilio, his Universal Manifesto (1957) [...] as a document, my first
view through the west window in Berlin, an abstract […] and all the heart could
desire. With regard to this picture, people kept telling me Franz Kline was
better – but he isn't! [...] Emilio loved ambushes, he was a partisan, he loved
the revolution, the grand gesture,
Expressionism, and me. But I'm not an Expressionist, and I despise the
revolution; at best, we can produce paintings, maybe even some good ones.
" (Georg Baselitz, 2007). After Vedova's death in 2006, Baselitz made a
series of black-and-white tributes to Emilio Vedova (Omaggio a Vedova), first
shown in the Venice Pavilion at the 2007 Biennale, in combination with three
dimensional works by Vedova. This was the origin of the idea for the Salzburg
project. In 2008, the Berlinische Galerie also held an exhibition of works by
both artists.
Emilio Vedova had a special relationship with the town of Salzburg.
Every year from 1965 to 69 he directed master classes in painting at the
Salzburg International Summer Academy, and during this period he also
influenced the cultural life of the town. In 1988, the Künstlerhaus held a solo
exhibition of his work, which attracted widespread notice. A book with an essay by Carla
Schulz-Hoffmann will accompany the exhibition.
http://ropac.net/exhibition/georg-baselitz-emilio-vedova
You may visit Georg Baselit: Magician of colours comprehensive news to click below link from my blog.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2015/11/georg-baselitz-magician-of-colours.html
EMILIO VEDOVA
DAGEGEN… ’82 -
1982
Water Paint, Pastel
Colour, Nitro Laquer & Sand on Canvas
Dimensions: 210 x
290 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova
EMILIO VEDOVA
DAGEGEN… ’82 - 1982 (DETAIL)
EMILIO VEDOVA
DI UMANO '84 - IV, 1984
Paint on Canvas
Dimensions: 235 ×
235 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova
Installation View:
Georg Baselitz & Emilio Vedova, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg,
© 2015 Courtesy
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg
Photograph: Ulrich
Ghezzi
EMILIO VEDOVA
...ALS OB... '83 -
6, 1983
Oil, Charcoal and
Sand on Canvas,
Dimensions: 235 x
235 cm
Courtesy Galerie
Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e
Annabianca
Vedova, Photo: Mussat Sartor
EMILIO VEDOVA
OLTRE – 10 ( CICLO I - 1985 ),
1985
Emulsion Paint,
Pastel, Sand and Iron Oxide Powder on Canvas
Dimensions: 280 ×
280 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova
Installation View: Georg Baselitz & Emilio Vedova, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg,
© 2015 Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg
Photograph: Ulrich Ghezzi
EMILIO VEDOVA
OLTRE - 3 (
CICLO I – 1985 ) 1985
Paint on Canvas
Dimensions: 280 x
280 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e
Annabianca
Vedova, Photo: Mussat Sartor
EMILIO VEDOVA
ROSSO 84’ - 1984
Paint on Canvas
Dimensions: 235 x
235 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e
Annabianca Vedova Photo:
Bruno Zanon
Installation View: Georg Baselitz & Emilio Vedova, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg,
© 2015 Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg
Photograph: Ulrich Ghezzi
EMILIO VEDOVA
DA DOVE ( 1983 – II
) 1983
Paint on Canvas
Dimensions: 230 x
300 cm
Galerie Thaddaeus
Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova
GALERI THADDAEUS ROPAC
SALZBURG VILLA KAST
GALERI THADDAEUS ROPAC
SALZBURG VILLA KAST
GEORG BASELITZ
LOUISE FULLER 2013
Bronze, Patinated, 837 kg
Dimensions: 351.5 x 135.5 x 130 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
FRANK KOMMT NACH HAUS 2014
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 300 × 207 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
BITTE HINTER DEN KOPF - 2014
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 300 × 207 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
MANTEL 2014
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 300 x 207 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
YELLOW SONG 2013 (
Bronze
Dimensions: 309.5 x 148 x 93 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
UND SO VARMED LOCH 2013
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 300 x 250 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
VIOLA DA GAMBA, SUONA 2015
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 186 x 115 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
Installation View: Georg Baselitz & Emilio Vedova, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg,
© 2015 Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg
Photograph: Ulrich Ghezzi
GEORG BASELITZ
ATTESE UN PELO DI BARBA, 2 PELI DI BARBA,
MA CHE BARBA DI VEDOVA, 2015 ( DETAIL )
GEORG BASELITZ
ATTESE UN PELO DI BARBA, 2 PELI DI BARBA, MA CHE BARBA DI VEDOVA,
2015
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 266 × 107 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
Photo: Jochen Littkemann
GEORG BASELITZ
ATTESE UN PELO DI BARBA, 2 PELI DI BARBA,
MA CHE BARBA DI VEDOVA, 2015 ( DETAIL )
GEORG BASELITZ
II TEMPO SEMPRE BELLO, ANCHE BELLO UN CANO 2015
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 300 x 170 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
LA FUTURA CAMMIN FACENDO - 2015
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 205 × 150 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
OHNE TITEL 2015
Ink onPaper
Dimensions: 66 x 51 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
VIVA LE PIRAMIDI 2015
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 106 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ
OHNE TITEL 2015
Ink on Paper
Dimensions: 65,8 x 51 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
Photo: Jochen Littkemann
GEORG BASELITZ
MOND 1989-2014
Bronze
Dimensions: 46 x 51,5 x 11 cm
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Georg Baselitz
GEORG BASELITZ’ WORDS
‘’ I’m a painter who always needs to see something in the near the
centre of a picture. – whether it’s a portrait or just a nose or a hook.
When you look through all my pictures, you can see that I
concentrate on the central motif. I know this and I don’t object, but sometimes
I think: that’s odd. Does it have to be?
Suddenly it came to me that I don’t make perforations or dark
spots, but just the ‘’ windmill commotion ‘’ of the feet. Then a picture
consists only of its limits, its outer edges, and no longer of the motif in the
centre. It is actually an idea that’s perhaps largely explained through the
title, but not through the motif.
This is why all these pictures are so monochrome. There are only
women’s legs, women’s feet, that are often unconnected.
I have to say, I always look around: first in my own biography: can
you justify what you just did, which was a bit risky and quiet different before?
Do you now have to jump out of the window, or is it ok? –and
second, are there comparisons in art history? –and I haven’t found any
comparisons – so far. ‘’
Georg Baselitz
http://ropac.net/exhibition_video/georg-baselitz-emilio-vedova
GEORG BASELITZ
SOURCE: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
German painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. After
attending grammar school in Kamenz, near Dresden, he began studying painting at
the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in East Berlin in 1956 but was expelled
after one term because of ‘socio-political immaturity’. After moving to West
Berlin in 1956, at which time he took a new surname reflecting his place of
birth, he resumed his studies in 1957 at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in
West Berlin; in 1961 he became a post-graduate student under Hann Trier,
completing his studies in 1962. He became interested in literature and in the
theoretical writings of painters such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Ernst Wilhelm
Nay. His intensive reading of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles
Baudelaire, the Comte de Lautréamont, Antonin Artaud, Stefan George, Gottfried
Benn and Samuel Beckett had a great influence on his early work.
After moving to West Berlin Baselitz became closely associated with
two other painters from East Germany, A. R. Penck and especially Eugen
Schönebeck, with whom he held his first exhibition in 1961. Together he and
Schönebeck published a manifesto entitled Pandämonium on this
occasion, followed by a second version in 1962 in connection with another joint
exhibition. Even in his early work of the late 1950s and early 1960s Baselitz
rebelled against the dominance of abstract painting, proposing in its place a
very personal, expressive figurative art rooted in the art brut and
psychotic art produced by the mentally ill and others at odds with society. The
imagery in these early works, symbolic of the body and its organs and of sexual
obsessions, borders on the traumatic. The most important picture of this phase
of his development, The Great Piss-up (oil on canvas, 2.5×1.8 m,
1962-3; Cologne, Mus. Ludwig), was confiscated as immoral when it was first
exhibited in West Berlin in 1963; it shows a naked man holding an exaggeratedly
large penis, with another nude figure doubled over on the floor behind him.
In 1965 Baselitz was awarded a scholarship for a year’s residential
study at the Villa Romana in Florence. In 1966 he moved from Berlin to
Osthofen, near Worms, and from there in 1971 to Forst an der Weinstrasse. From
the mid-1960s he concentrated on several figure types—‘heroes’, ‘rebels’ and
‘shepherds’—sometimes portrayed as scarred or wounded but presented in a
stylized form as modern heroes, as people from a mythical land beyond our
questionable civilization. These complete pictures, rich in their spiritual and
historical overtones, culminated in the Great Friends (oil on canvas,
2.5×3.0 m, 1965; Vienna, Mus. 20. Jhts), in which two standing figures, larger
than life, are shown against a black wilderness. They were followed by
compositions in which the image was divided into strips shown side by side in
different combinations as in Kullervo’s Feet (1.62×1.30 m,
1967; see London exh. cat., 1983–4, p. 39). Using this dismemberment of the
subject as a first stage in the disruption of its legibility, Baselitz began to
play down the importance of subject-matter and to emphasize in its place the underlying
pictorial structure.
From 1969 Baselitz painted his subjects upside down, as in
the Forest on its Head (2.5×1.9 m, 1969; Cologne, Mus.
Ludwig), seeing in this method the possibility of stressing the realization of
the motif as a painted surface and the form as his primary concern. While
making use of elements familiar from his earlier pictures, he now made them
subservient to the physical and pictorial properties of the medium itself, not
only in paintings such as Elke Nude (1977; Eindhoven, Stedel. Van
Abbemus.) but also in his drawings, etchings and woodcuts.
After moving in 1975 to Derneburg, near Hildesheim, Baselitz served
as professor of painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in
Karlsruhe (1977–82) and at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in West Berlin
(1983–8); he divided his time during these years between Derneburg and Imperia
on the Italian Riviera. Although he continued to present the medium itself as
his primary vehicle of expression, in the 1980s he again gave greater weight to
subject-matter, for example in variations on compositions by Munch or in
reworkings of Christian iconography. Painter with Sailing Ship (Munch) (2.5×2.0
m, 1982; see London exh. cat., 1983–4, p. 17) is one of several portraits of
Munch made at this time. In these reinterpretations, however, the densely
worked surface and monumentality of form are even more marked than in his
earlier work. This association of explosive iconography with a virtually
abstract painterly technique is impressively brought to bear in the two
paintings of 1983 dedicated to Die Brücke, the group of Expressionist painters
based in Dresden in the early 20th century: Supper in Dresden (Zurich,
Ksthaus) and the Brücke Choir (New
York, Emily and Jerry Spiegel priv. col.).
In 1979 Baselitz began work on his first monumental sculptures in
wood, for which he employed an elemental and deliberately unpolished technique
that gave his figures and heads an archetypal forcefulness. One of the earliest
of these, Model for a Sculpture (painted limewood, 1980; see London
exh. cat., 1983–4, p. 17), exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1980, represents
a human torso as if rising from the block of wood resting on the ground. Like
Kirchner before him, he exploited the directness and freedom from verisimilitude
of African sculpture to arrive at an expressive power inextricably related to
the laying bare of the methodical nature of the creative process. He continued
to produce isolated examples of such sculptures at fairly long intervals while
continuing to extend his range as a draughtsman and printmaker, for example in
a series of monumental woodcuts such as Drinker / Head with
Bottle (1000×785 mm, 1981; see Gohr, p. 150). Having worked for many years
against the mainstream of contemporary art, by the 1980s he had established an
international reputation through his influence on the young German
Neo-Expressionist painters referred to in Germany as the ‘Neue Wilden’.
Andreas Franzke - From Grove Art Online
© 2009 Oxford University Press
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A366&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1&displayall=1#skipToContent
EMILIO VEDOVA
Born in Venice into a family of workers and artisans, from the
1930s onwards Vedova began an intense activity as a self-taught artist, drawing
figures and buildings. In 1942, the young Vedova joined the anti-Novecento
movement known as “Corrente”.
An anti-Fascist, he worked for the Resistance from 1944 to 1945 and in 1946, he was one of the co-signers of the "Oltre Guernica" manifesto in Milan. In the same year in Venice he was one of the founders of the “Nuova Secessione Italiana” followed by the “Fronte Nuovo delle Arti”.
In 1948 he made his debut in the Venice Biennale, the first of many appearances in this event: in 1952 an entire room was devoted to his work, in 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting and in 1997 the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement.
In the early 1950s he created his celebrated cycles of works: “Scontro di situazioni” (Collision of Situations), “Ciclo della Protesta” (Protest Cycle), “Cicli della Natura” (Cycles of Nature). In 1954, at the second São Paolo Art Biennial he won a prize that would allow him to spend three months in Brazil, where he encountered an extreme, hard reality that would leave its mark on him. In 1961 he designed the sets and costumes for Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza ‘60” (Intolerance ’60); in 1984 he would work with the composer again on “Prometeo”.
From 1961 onwards he worked on his “Plurimi” creating an initial Venetian series followed by works made from 1963 to 1964 in Berlin including the seven pieces forming the “Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ‘64” (Absurd Berlin Diary ’64) presented at the 1964 Kassel Documenta where he also showed in 1955, 1959 and 1982. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on “Spazio/Plurimo/Luce” (Space/Plurimo/Light) for the Montreal EXPO.
He carried out intense teaching activities in various American universities followed by the Sommerakademie in Salzburg and the Academy of Venice. His artistic career was characterised by a constant desire to explore and innovate.
In the 1970s he created the “Plurimi Binari” in the “Lacerazione” (Laceration) and “Carnevali” (So-called carnivals) cycles followed by the vast cycles of “teleri” (big canvases) and his “Disks”, “Tondi”, “Oltre” (Beyond) and “…in continuum…” (...in continuum...) works. He won numerous prestigious prizes and awards. His last important solo exhibitions included the major retrospective held at Castello di Rivoli in 1998 and, after his death in 2006, the sister shows at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin).
An anti-Fascist, he worked for the Resistance from 1944 to 1945 and in 1946, he was one of the co-signers of the "Oltre Guernica" manifesto in Milan. In the same year in Venice he was one of the founders of the “Nuova Secessione Italiana” followed by the “Fronte Nuovo delle Arti”.
In 1948 he made his debut in the Venice Biennale, the first of many appearances in this event: in 1952 an entire room was devoted to his work, in 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting and in 1997 the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement.
In the early 1950s he created his celebrated cycles of works: “Scontro di situazioni” (Collision of Situations), “Ciclo della Protesta” (Protest Cycle), “Cicli della Natura” (Cycles of Nature). In 1954, at the second São Paolo Art Biennial he won a prize that would allow him to spend three months in Brazil, where he encountered an extreme, hard reality that would leave its mark on him. In 1961 he designed the sets and costumes for Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza ‘60” (Intolerance ’60); in 1984 he would work with the composer again on “Prometeo”.
From 1961 onwards he worked on his “Plurimi” creating an initial Venetian series followed by works made from 1963 to 1964 in Berlin including the seven pieces forming the “Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ‘64” (Absurd Berlin Diary ’64) presented at the 1964 Kassel Documenta where he also showed in 1955, 1959 and 1982. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on “Spazio/Plurimo/Luce” (Space/Plurimo/Light) for the Montreal EXPO.
He carried out intense teaching activities in various American universities followed by the Sommerakademie in Salzburg and the Academy of Venice. His artistic career was characterised by a constant desire to explore and innovate.
In the 1970s he created the “Plurimi Binari” in the “Lacerazione” (Laceration) and “Carnevali” (So-called carnivals) cycles followed by the vast cycles of “teleri” (big canvases) and his “Disks”, “Tondi”, “Oltre” (Beyond) and “…in continuum…” (...in continuum...) works. He won numerous prestigious prizes and awards. His last important solo exhibitions included the major retrospective held at Castello di Rivoli in 1998 and, after his death in 2006, the sister shows at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin).
You may read Emilio Vedova’s comprehensive biography to click
below link of Emilio Vedova’s web paage.
http://www.fondazionevedova.org/en/emilio-vedova/biography/1919-1943
