Culture

Solo show Eugenio Da Venezia

by Alain Chivilò

© Alain Chivilò


The virtual exhibition dedicated to the painter Eugenio Da Venezia (Venice 09/11/1900 – 07/09/1992), “Liriche Figurazioni” is a tribute to kindness, landscape, nude, portrait, silent nature and flowers for a dreamlike expressiveness, but at the same time real, for a never tame figuration.
At least four years have elapsed since the last posthumous physical exhibition, curated by Alain Chivilò at the Castle of Zumelle in Mel, for the first time a visual path is proposed along a sequence of works, inherent to several decades of the personal artistic process, through the curator and art critic Alain. A virtual exhibition, in memory, along the brushstrokes and painting of the Master.








Information and Archive: eugeniodavenezia.eu

Eugenio Da Venezia’s painting unfolds between peace and harmony within a close link with the Venetian color tradition starting from the Renaissance. A creativity that joined with the first generation of the so-called School of Burano (artists such as Pio Semeghini, Umberto Moggioli and Gino Rossi) and French Impressionism. Within these poles, the pictorial interpretation of Da Venezia starts with a subsequent personal evolution.
The meeting with the painter Pierre Bonnard at the Venice Biennale in 1934 learns the key concept of pictorial poetics: once a certain mastery of form has been established and internalized, it must immediately be destroyed through a great quality of demonstrated colorist.
In summary, an interior predisposition to post-impressionism of French derivation which, combined with Bonnard’s council, lives in the territorial context determined by the Burano School, leading Eugenio to paint outdoors with never bright and noisy tones. A “lean” painting on the canvas, with a slightly hinted touch but at the same time decisive and not hesitant.
If for some it may appear a melancholy sense, none of this, indeed quite the opposite. His interpretative artistic energy led him to a balance wisely dosed on the canvas.
An innate gift that allowed him to participate in nine editions of the Venice Biennale between 1932 and ’56, plus an out of date for the 50th anniversary of the historic Venetian institution.
In the meantime, on a global level, although art is feeding on a new artistic context, Da Venezia defended figuration to the end. Probably this position of him was a limit that instead overcame Giuseppe Santomaso, a friend in his artistic beginnings, passing from figurative to abstract interpretations.
Among his fellows: Marco Novati, Fioravante Seibezzi, Aldo Bergamini, Carlo Dalla Zorza, Gigi Candiani, Mario Varagnolo, Cosimo Privato, Armando Tonello, Renzo Zanutto, Sara Angelo, Nino Parenti, Mario Disertori, Giorgio Valenzin Oscar Cavallet, Rino Villa and many others.
The criticism of the time, as for other of his friends, was very focused on enhancing the artistic period from about 1935 to 1960, however, as for other Masters, the entire process must never be forgotten. Consequently, the last twenty, thirty years of his production were also interesting in the painter who bears the Serenissima in his surname, in which he painted very interesting works with a more marked and vital touch tending to expressionist references, albeit in a balance of shape and color that always distinguished him.
Information and Archive curated by Alain Chivilò: eugeniodavenezia.eu


by Alain Chivilò