Nearly fifty years after the death of Carlo Scarpa (Venice, 1906 - Sendai, 1978), the Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova in Possagno is dedicating an extensive exhibition to the Venetian architect that reconstructs his long and articulate dialogue with the arts through the leitmotif of the Venice Biennale, with which he collaborated for nearly forty years, from 1934 to 1972. The exhibition, which can be visited from June 22, 2025 to January 11, 2026 and is curated by Mario Gemin and Orietta Lanzarini, focuses on one of the most fertile and least conventional aspects of Scarpi’s production: his ability to move on the subtle ridge between architecture and staging, between design and work, between creation and care of vision. The exhibition’s scientific committee consists of Moira Mascotto (chair), Elisabetta Barisoni, Giovanni Bianchi, Francesca Castellani, Mauro Pierconti and Carla Sonego.
Organized in three sections, The Artists, The Glasses, and The Biennale, the exhibition allows visitors to traverse the cultural and aesthetic geography that nourished Scarpa’s imagination, highlighting the central role the Biennale played in the development of his design poetics. The first section presents a selection of works by artists that Scarpa knew, studied or contributed to making known to the general public precisely through his museum settings: among others, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, Giorgio Morandi, Arturo Martini, Osvaldo Licini, Alberto Viani, and Mario De Luigi. The works, drawings, watercolors, sculptures, and oils, all come from the collection of Luciano Gemin, an architect from Treviso and close collaborator of Scarpa, to whom the exhibition pays tribute.
“It is a source of pride,” says Mayor of Possagno, Valerio Favero, “as mayor and for the community I represent, to be able to host, within our museum, this major exhibition dedicated to the deep connection between Carlo Scarpa and the Venice Biennale. A bond that not only marked almost forty years of the history of Venetian exhibition architecture, but also helped shape the gaze and thought of one of the most refined and visionary protagonists of the 20th century. I thank all those who made this initiative possible, from the Gemin family to scholars to curators, from collectors to the institutions involved. Possagno and our museum are increasingly proving to be a place where creativity and memory meet, and this exhibition is a significant example of that.”
“We are proud to host in Possagno an exhibition of great cultural value, which pays tribute to an absolute protagonist of Italian architecture such as Carlo Scarpa, whose connection with the Venice Biennale was a pivotal point of his artistic and design vision,” says the president of Fondazione Canova ONLUS, Massimo Zanetti. “This review, which is also a tribute to his pupil Luciano Gemin, a figure of great importance in the recent history of our Museum, confirms the commitment of Fondazione Canova Onlus in promoting high-profile exhibition projects capable of enhancing the dialogue between art, architecture and territory.”
“For the first time,” says Director of the Gypsotheca Antonio Canova Museum, Moira Mascotto, “the Possagno Museum is presenting an exhibition project designed to enhance the figure of Carlo Scarpa not only as an architect, but also as a multifaceted artist and protagonist of the cultural landscape of the 20th century. The exhibition, organized around a selection of works from the Gemin Collection, offers an opportunity to delve into the multiple aspects of his creative path and to explore the relevance of his collaboration with the Venice Biennale.”
“For my father,” says the exhibition’s co-curator, Mario Gemin, "the decision, suggested by the painter Bruno Saetti, to leave the Academy of Fine Arts to devote himself to the study of architecture represented a turning point. It was that choice that pushed him to maintain a close link with the artistic world: initially he turned to the masters of the Academy, then he approached the circle of painters linked to Carlo Cardazzo’s Galleria d’Arte del Cavallino, and finally widened his gaze to the Milanese and Parisian environment. It was mainly thanks to Carlo Scarpa that plaster casts and bronzes by Alberto Viani, grattages by Mario Deluigi and works by other artists exhibited at the Venice Biennale became part of the collection. After the Maestro’s passing, it was Giuseppe Mazzariol who picked up his legacy, directing my father’s choices toward contemporary artists, but also on painters of the Venetian sixteenth century."
“The exhibition itinerary of the show,” says the exhibition’s co-curator, Orietta Lanzarini , “defines-through a selection of fine works of painting, sculpture and graphics, most of them previously unpublished, and a group of splendid Murano glassware-a sort of ’cultural geography’ that interweaves Carlo Scarpa’s personal and professional history with that of the artists, both Italian and international, who populated the Biennale in the forty years during which the architect worked for the Venetian institution.”
The second section is devoted to Scarpa’s Murano season, which began in the 1920s at M.V.M. Cappellin and then continued with the Venini firm, with which he worked continuously until 1947. The glass pieces on display, some 20 in all, document the technical elegance and experimental tension with which Scarpa was able to reinvent an age-old formal language, bringing it into direct dialogue with avant-garde research and contemporary plastic languages.
Finally, the third section focuses on the 1968 Biennale, a central event not only for the history of the Venetian institution, but also for Scarpa’s professional and poetic parabola. On that occasion, called upon to design the layout of the exhibition Lines of Research: from informal to new structures, Scarpa decided to exhibit in the first person not drawings or architectural projects, but three sculptures, now preserved in the Gemin Collection, strongly affirming his status as an artist as well as an architect. The exhibition also displays previously unpublished autograph drawings, documenting the creative effort employed by Scarpa to expand and transform the exhibition spaces of the Italian Pavilion, and materials related to the staging of the exhibition Masterpieces of 20th Century Painting 1900-1945, which in 1972 marked the end of his collaboration with the Biennale.
Alongside the tribute to Carlo Scarpa, the exhibition is also a tribute to the figure of Luciano Gemin (Treviso, 1928 - 2023), Scarpa’s pupil, friend and associate, to whom we owe the collection from which all the works on display come, and the conception of the Gemin Wing of the Possagno Museum, an extension of the original building designed by Scarpa himself in the 1950s. A rich calendar of initiatives accompanies the exhibition, with guided tours, family activities, workshops for schools, lectures and meetings with scholars and architects. During the period of the exhibition, part of the building will also undergo a conservative restoration aimed at protecting and enhancing the “Cannocchiale,” one of Scarpa’s most striking architectural solutions. The exhibition catalog, co-edited with SAGEP, features critical essays by the curators, Moira Mascotto, Carla Sonego and Elisabetta Barisoni.
 |
| Carlo Scarpa and the arts in the Biennale: an exhibition in Possagno traces this relationship |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
