Gli spazi della cultura

Suspended space and time.
A return to the essential, to the ancestral dimension of origins, to a remote past of darkness and symbols; a return to man’s innate need to express soul, thought, fears, knowledge without superstructures; to grasp the light in the dark.

This is the atmosphere evoked by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation in the event set up in Venice’s Palazzo Erizzo Ligabue from April 18 to 27 with an exhibition of 10 photographs by artist Domingo Milella (Bari, 1981), who has been carrying out his creative research for nearly a decade in the most important historiated prehistoric Caverns in the history of the human species.

The setting up and opening after sunset of the FUTUROREMOTO exhibition (free visits by reservation required at 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.), in the rooms of the Venetian palace on the Grand Canal stripped bare by the work the Foundation has begun, with a view to the public use of the venue and the birth of what is already being called the “Palace of the Arts,” is intended to evoke darkness, an essential element of Milella’s research.

A fascinating journey, which identifies a ‘northern’ line of continuity from Leonardo’s caricatured, grotesque heads to the caricatures of Anton Maria Zanetti and Giambattista Tiepolo in 18th-century Venice.
An extraordinary and disturbing exhibition of deformed faces, anatomical exaggerations, physiognomic investigations, caricature figures and galleries of “human characters.”
Also displayed are 18 drawings by Leonardo including – for the first time in Italy – some sheets from the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.

A journey to discover the clubs of Oceania, to understand their sculptural beauty and their deepest meaning.
An exhibition never held before, organized by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation in collaboration with the Musée du quai Brainly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. The aim of the exhibition is to reveal the full cultural complexity of “clubs” as sculptures, images of divinities, symbols of authority, as well as weapons.

The 126 works on display have been selected for their exceptional quality, rarity and historical importance. Drawing on major European collections, including that of the British Museum in London, the Ligabue Foundation presents the exceptional skills and creative imagination of 19th and 20th century sculptors from all over Oceania.

Ligabue has a great story to narrate. On the occasion of its centenary, we had the honor of sharing it through a major exhibition set up in the evocative spaces of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice.
100 years of corporate events straddling two centuries: 1,000 square meters of exhibition space, 30 thematic islands, historical and unpublished videos, audio, multi-projections and multimedia installations. A great corporate museum in Venice.

A journey through time and space.
The “neolithic revolution” and the representation of humans.
The discovery of the soul.

More than 100 works between West and East, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley, from the gates of the Atlantic to the remote borders of the Far East, from 4000 to 2000 BC: the dawn of civilization.

Since prehistoric times, man has felt the need to represent the human figure: with graffiti and wall paintings, but also in three-dimensional form.
From those distant times, since the Paleolithic age, we have received an immense quantity of figurines made of different materials reproducing human traits.
What was their meaning – symbolic, religious or testimonial value, expression of metaphysical concepts, ritual or “political” function – and which subjects they really represented, still represents a mystery.
The exhibition “Idols” (from the Greek eídolon, image) – promoted by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation and curated by Annie Caubet – honorary curator of the Musée du Louvre – offers us a fascinating journey through time and space: the first attempt to compare from East to West works depicting the human body from 4000-2000 BC.
Through 100 extraordinary finds – some of which are exceptional for their historical and scientific importance and rarity – and thanks to an engaging didactic apparatus, it will be possible to cover a wide geographical area extending from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley, from the gates of the Atlantic to the remote borders of the Far East, in an era of great transition, in which the villages of the Neolithic gradually evolved into the urban societies of the Bronze Age.

Life, customs and cosmogonies of the Meso and South American cultures before Columbus, told through over 230 works of art. A major exhibition introduces us to The World That Never Was. Never-seen-before masterpieces from the Ligabue Collection, precious evidence from the ancient Medici collections and international loans accompany us on a spectacular journey into pre-Columbian civilizations.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Europe was shaken by an epoch-making discovery: the “Indies”, “the world that didn’t exist”. This event unhinged the cultural vision of the traditional Rome-Greece-East axis. The discovery of a new continent was perhaps the most important event in the history of mankind according to anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

This spectacular exhibition is dedicated to the different pre-Columbian civilizations that had thrived for thousands of years in that land, with a corpus of masterpieces – almost all of them never seen before – an expression of the great civilizations of the so-called Mesoamerica (most of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, part of Honduras and El Salvador) and the territory of Panama.
The exhibition tells the story of the Andes peoples (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, up to Chile and Argentina): from the Olmecs to the Mayas, to the Aztecs; from the Chavin culture to the Tiahuanaco and Moche cultures, up to the Incas. It was a Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first to understand that the lands encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were not Indian islands off the coast of Cipango (Japan) and not even the sought-after gates of Eden, but a “Mundus Novus”, a new continent that a few years later some geographers working in Saint-Denis des Voges wanted to call, in his honour, “America”.

An extraordinary journey to the origins of civilization, in the places where Prehistory steps into History thanks to one of the most fantastic inventions of man: writing.
A revolution represented through many documents from the land of the two rivers: clay tablets or precious materials, along with seals that reproduce stories, symbols and gestures of daily life so far in time but so close even today to our being men in the world.

200 artefacts, including sigils, tablets and objects from Mesopotamian civilizations, cover over 3000 years of writing history.
From the first pictograms to the abstraction of cuneiform signs, an evolution told also through interactive multimedia technologies, which make clear and compelling the birth of written communication and its history.