Alberto Burri

At the heart of Abstraction Works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art

Fondation Maeght

The exhibition at the Fondation Maeght will show works from the collection of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art from the 2nd of July until the 20th of November 2022 and offers an immersion in the vibrant creation of the years 1945 to 1980.

Home to a collection of more than 13,000 works, Fondation Maeght is always keen and honoured to showcase other collections, some of which are rarely accessible to the public, as it has consistently done in the past. This summer, from 2 July to 20 November, it is unveiling some 120 works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva) and offering a riveting immersion into abstraction from the 1950s to the 1980s.

In the wake of Second World War, as many European artists exiled in the United States headed back to France, Paris regained its status as a hotbed of creativity and a global cultural capital. Driven by a thirst for freedom and a craving to rethink painting in the post-war years, artists from all over the world returned to their studios, abandoned during the German occupation, and engaged in an era of creative effervescence, be it in the arts, literature or filmmaking. While the breakthroughs by the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century were an invaluable post-war stimulus, abstract art renewed itself from the most gestural expression to the interrogation of materials, mediums and techniques.

The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art’s outstanding collection displayed at Fondation Maeght reveals the variety of forms em- braced by abstraction during these creative years. Works by Hans Hartung, Martin Barré, Simon Hantaï or Pierre Soulag- es trace the evolution of non-figurative art over four decades. In a thematic and chronological layout, the exhibition invites the viewer to discover lyrical and gestural abstraction by Georges Mathieu, abstract expressionism by Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, geometric abstraction by Victor Vasarely, kinetic works by Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, through to the rethinking of painting by the Supports/Surfaces group. The 1980s ushered in an era of revitalized abstract art, building on the hectic experimentation of earlier years.

Guest curator: Yan Schubert, the Gandur Collection pour l’Art curato

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La luce nel nero

Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri

“La Luce del Nero” is the title of the upcoming exhibition hosted in one of the two museums of Fondazione Burri, the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello, Italy. Here, the color Black shifts from the concept of dark and absence to becoming an actual color. This event has been designed to be inclusive for a public with visual impairment, besides offering an immediate and highly stimulating sensorial experience to all visitors.

Bruno Corà, curator of this exhibition and President of Fondazione Burri, highlights how Black “between the Middle Ages and the XVII century was no longer considered a color. Artists restored its chromatic value and among them, in particular Kazimir Malevič, author of the well-known “Black Square on white background” (1915), a print of which is present in our exhibition”.
Among the artists of the second half of the XX century, Burri is the one who most used the color Black, to the extent of painting the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco completely black. These industrial buildings became the museum hosting its major pictorial cycles.

Together with Burri, other artists included in this exhibition created artworks using black, such as Agnetti, Bassiri, Bendini, Castellani, Fontana, Hartung, Isgrò, Kounellis, Lo Savio, Morris, Nevelson, Nunzio, Parmiggiani, Schifano, Soulages and Tàpies. Each one of them with different modalities, intentions and meaning, all capable of arousing in the visitor different feelings, perceptions, sensations. Eventually, poets feelings as well are turned on Black and caecitas to explain the inner gaze of the psychic and poetic look in opposition to the actual vision.
The exhibition “La Luce del Nero” has been organized within the framework of the Creative Europe programme, through the “Beam Up” project (Blind Engagement In Accessible Museum Projects), which addresses the issue of accessibility of contemporary art for a public with visual impairment at an international and inclusive level.

This exhibition crowns the reopening of the venues of the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco after 7 years of constructions, which fully upgraded these exhibition areas. As stated by Mr. Corà “in the world, there are very few artist’s museums such as the Burri museum in Città di Castello, which can pride itself on having a museum itinerary that starts from Palazzo Albizzini and ends to the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco without fearing comparisons with any other museum”.

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