Category: Europe
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Alberto paints Annette
Alberto paints Annette The fact that the artist (Alberto Giacometti) paints a picture of his wife on this photo by Ernst Scheidegger is nothing special. She was his favourite female model. Still it gives the scene a touch of intimacy, a feeling that is intensified by the incident light in the otherwise dark wooden atmosphere…
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Kunsthaus window
Kunsthaus window When taking in and digesting art works in a museum there is always a moment that I pass a window and look through it at the world outside with an art-infused eye. This time it happened in the Kunsthaus in Zürich. It was winter and it had snowed a bit. Photo of the…
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Piet Mondria(a)n
Piet Mondria(a)n Mondria(a)n belongs to the canon of modern art. In the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam I saw the two top paintings exposed, in the Kunsthaus in Zürich the two bottom ones. The resemblance in choice of the two museums is striking. Mondria(a)n’s abstract work has become so commonplace and has been violated to such…
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Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh Two peasant women work the land with dedication, bent over in unison. With their postures and central position they energize the painting. That was at least what I felt when seeing it in the Kunsthaus in Zürich. The devotion of the peasant women is matched by each of Van Gogh’s vibrant brushstrokes.…
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Kijken Zien Schilderen
Kijken Zien Schilderen To Look See Paint Looking is what we do all the time, at the other, at the world around us. When we look with attentive concentration we start seeing the other, the world, in full consciousness. That’s what Dutch painters in the 17th century were good at and were perfecting ever more…
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Procession
Procession In 2022 I was passing through the Museo Correr in great hurry when my eye fell on this relief fixed on a wall in one of the rooms. I quickly took a photo but had no time to search for a description of the work and I haven’t been able to find information about…
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La serenissima and India
La serenissima and India La Serenissima, ‘the most serene Republic of Venice’, was a dominant trading power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, not only in the Mediterranean but as far as the Middle East and Asia. That’s why we see on one of Kiefer’s paintings which he made for the exhibition in 2022 in…
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Tidal wave
Tidal wave “It sometimes happens that there is a convergence between past and present moments, and as they come together one experiences something of that stillness in the hollow of a wave about to break.” (Anselm Kiefer) In the past, Venice was a formidable maritime power whose ships triumphed over turbulent seas. Now, with the…
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Vintage Kiefer
Vintage Kiefer The enormous paintings that – for the time of the exhibition – covered the painted walls of the Sala dello Scrutinio in the Palazzo Ducale in 2022 consist not just of paint on canvas. Whole bicycles, shopping trolleys, clothes and, of course, little submarines are attached to the canvasses. But it’s through the…
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Questi scritti, …
Questi scritti, … … quando verrano bruciati, daramo finalmente un po’di luce : These writings, when burned, will finally cast a little light. That’s the title Kiefer gave to his exhibition of paintings in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice in 2022, coinciding with the Biennale of that year. It’s a line taken from a text by…
καιρός remembered 