Wednesday 22 February 2023, 5.30 pm
Wednesday 22 February 2023 at 5.30 p.m. in Venice, at the Biblioteca dell’Archivio Storico – Padiglione Centrale ai Giardini, Calle Paludo S. Antonio, the Venice Biennale presents three volumes dedicated to Giovanni Carandente.
Artistic Director of the Visual Arts sector of the Venice Biennale from 1988 and 1990, Superintendent of the Gallerie del Veneto and Director of the International University of Art, Carandente will be remembered by Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History of the Cini Foundation, Duccio K. Marignoli, President of the Marignoli di Montecorona Foundation, Marco Tonelli, Professor of Art History at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, with an introduction by the President of the Venice Biennale, Roberto Cicutto.
Edited by the National Committee for the Celebration of the Centenary of Giovanni Carandente’s Birth and published by Silvana editoriale, the volumes are the result of the international conference “A Life for Art” and a documentary exhibition “Archives and Documents”, 14 December 2020 – 26 December 2021, held in Spoleto at Palazzo Collicola, and of a research call for young Italian scholars “Carandente at the GNAM in Rome 1955-1961”.
“Giovanni Carandente,” stated Danilo Chiodetti, councillor for the Enhancement of the Culture, Quality and Beauty of the City and the Territory, “is a figure who has left a decisive mark on the cultural and artistic history of Spoleto, through experiences of extraordinary visionary nature such as the exhibition ‘Sculptures in the City’, organised in 1962 on the occasion of the 5th Festival of the Two Worlds. Even today, Spoleto celebrates his work, through the care of the Donazione Carandente conserved at Palazzo Collicola in the library that bears his name, inside the Galleria d’Arte Moderna that he founded in 2000 and directed until 2009, where more than 30,000 of his volumes on modern and contemporary art are housed, enhanced by multimedia material, a photo library and three archival fonds‘.
Biographical note
Giovanni Carandente was born in Naples on 30 August 1920. The first true figure of an Italian curator and critic with an exquisitely international outlook, Carandente was able to range from ancient art (in 1953 he curated a major exhibition on Antonello da Messina) to modern and contemporary art with identical competence and passion.
In 1946 he joined the Fine Arts Administration, a sector in which he served as inspector and superintendent in various regions (Sicily, Abruzzo and Molise, Latium, Veneto). In 1955 he became inspector of the exhibitions sector of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, for which he was responsible for the organisation, layout and catalogue of important exhibitions including Mondrian, the masterpieces of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Wassiliy Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock and Kazimir Malevič.
In 1961 he moved to the Soprintendenza delle gallerie e delle opere d’arte medievali e moderne per il Lazio, becoming director of the Galleria nazionale d’arte antica di Palazzo Barberini and the Museo nazionale di Palazzo Venezia in Rome.
At the same time, he began his activity as curator of contemporary art exhibitions, starting with the pioneering Sculture nella città. Spoleto 62, after which he became responsible for the artistic side of many editions of the Festival Of Two Worlds.
From 1988 to 1990 he was director of the Visual Arts section of the Venice Biennale.
During his career, he curated some of the most important exhibitions of great modern painters and sculptors, such as Picasso, Balthus, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Anthony Caro, Marino Marini, David Smith, presenting a large anthological exhibition on Leoncillo in Spoleto in 1969, the first after the artist’s death.
In 2000, he ordered the setting up of Spoleto’s Modern Art Gallery in Palazzo Collicola, to which he donated a large part of his personal collection of works, which now form a significant nucleus of the museum, and his entire library, more than 30,000 volumes, with texts mainly on modern and contemporary art.
In 1989, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire on him for his outstanding contribution to artistic relations between Great Britain and Italy, while in 2002 he was awarded the Gold Medal for meritorious contributions to culture and art by the President of the Italian Republic. He passed away in Rome on 7 June 2009.
For further information, please contact the Press Office | La Biennale di Venezia at +39 041 5218 – 846/849 or email: pressoffice@labiennale.org.
Spoleto, Tuesday 21 February 2023
