Venice, Mariano Fortuny Museum opens its second floor to tell the story of the Fortuny's eclectic personality

The Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo Museum in Venice opens from October 25, 2022 its second floor, where the creativity of Mariano Fortuny is told. For the first time in history, the Fondazione Musei Civici has decided to present to the public objects that until now were kept in storage. At the behest of the City of Venice and the Venetian Civic Museums Foundation, the museum’s spacious rooms welcome, thanks to their accessibility and layout, a series of focuses on Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo and his activities, an eclectic artist, friend of D’Annunzio and Eleonora Duse, who was a painter, stylist, set designer and designer.

“These in-depth spaces turn out to be fundamental to really know, and under different profiles, the extraordinary personality and vicissitude of Fortuny. An artist and, at the same time, a careful and original entrepreneur, who knows how to bring his brand, and that of Venice, into the great world of the time,” said museum director and MUVE Executive Chiara Squarcina.

The spotlight is on the Fortunys, father and son, and on the art ofengraving, which they both collected and above all practiced in an original way, so much so that they influenced the graphics of the time in terms of styles, themes and procedures. On the one hand the father, still tied to the Goy tradition, and on the other the son, who developed a personal technique in etching and aquatint, even using an electric drill for dental use to achieve the original optical effects that can be admired on his prints. Along with the etchings, one can also observe the tools, including two presses of different make and age, used to make them.

A second focus intends to delve into what Mariano Fortuny, flanked by his wife Henriette, produced in the field of textile art, transforming the small workshop created in the attic of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei into one of the most prestigious textile industries of the early 20th century in Europe. It was a peculiarity of the Fortuny brand to recreate the illusion of ancient textiles worked by resorting only to the technique of printing, managing to propose refined reworkings of iconographic repertoires drawn from the family’s historical collection and from cultures of different countries. At first, wooden stencils were used, and then he switched to a photoserigraphic type of process, with mechanical rotary imprinting on even large sheets.

Fortuny also tried his hand at photography, experimenting with the most diverse techniques and equipment until he patented his own special"Fortuny Paper" in 1933, which guaranteed the image a textural appearance and inalterability to light. The new rooms feature images made by Mr. and Mrs. Fortuny and taken from their extensive personal archives: a body of work ranging from technical photography to the simple recording of everyday life, made up of self-portraits, portraits of friends and family, house interiors, city views and landscapes.

Among Fortuny’s main passions was theater, as one of the new sections of his house-museum recounts. Already in the attic of the Pesaro degli Orfei Palace, the artist had begun experimenting with stagecraft. The result was the"Fortuny System," a complex lighting apparatus that could be controlled remotely and had light streams of varying intensity. Also on display is the model of the Bayreuth theater, an exemplification of Fortuny’s theatrical reform at the time applied in the major theaters of Europe From these studies came the"Fortuny Diffusers," indirect light lamps marketed in the 1920s.

Epicenter of the Fortuny House’s creativity, however, is Mariano’s private library, the place where the idea took shape and became a prototype. For the first time, a cabinet d’amateur, a wunderkammer full of precious things, objects of use, curiosities, tools, documents, volumes, is revealed here to the public.

Contents and container are Fortuny creations. Illuminating the scene is the natural light coming in through the large Gothic windows. This is where Mariano kept his treasures as a bibliophile: illustrated treatises from every era, the entire Encyclopedie, collections of engravings, magazines, volumes of art and science. The cabinets housed more than one hundred and fifty albums covered with Fortuny fabrics and containing iconographic documentation, sketches, photos, notes, clippings, and especially pictures, photos of paintings, architecture, decorations and friezes, ceramics, and weapons.

“Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was born and grew up immersed in genius and beauty, which he then gave back to the world, with his muse and companion, in the adventurous life that finally brought them to this marvelous palace,” commented the president of the Venice Museums Foundation, Mariacristina Gribaudi. “Here Mariano and Henriette experimented and fabricated their productions, here are the memories of them and of the most important personalities of the century who traveled in cosmopolitan Venice, their guests. Here it is now finally possible to discover or rediscover a piece of Venice’s history perhaps less famous than others, but certainly no less important, an industrious and cultural history that continues to amaze with creativity and vision.”

“The opening of the second floor of the Fortuny Museum reflects the desire to consciously deepen and communicate the figure of Mariano Fortuny, a brilliant artist who always looked beyond the horizon,” added Chiara Squarcina, head of the museum and MUVE Museum Activities Area Director. "I believe that for the Fondazione Musei Civici this opening is important for a sharing with the whole city and the whole world of entrepreneurial know-how. It should also not be forgotten that this opening follows up on the testamentary bequest of Henriette Nigrin, an exceptional woman who always flanked Mariano Fortuny throughout his multifaceted activity and with whom he shared life and art projects. The decisive aspect is that we now, with the opening of the second floor, offer a 360-degree view of Fortuny’s eclectic personality and the possibility of exploring the artistic and cultural background of this man, Spanish by birth but Venetian by adoption, who chose Venice as the stage for his intellectual and aesthetic aspirations."

For info: fortuny.visitmuve.it

Image: Venice, Museo Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo @ Massimo Listri

Venice, Mariano Fortuny Museum opens its second floor to tell the story of the Fortuny's eclectic personality

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