Matthias Schaller. Das Meisterstück

The exhibition consists of a series of photographs by German artist Matthias Schaller.

The subjects of the photos are palettes of artists who have shaped the last hundred years of the history of European painting. To be installed in the Palladian Refectoryon the Island of San Giorgio, the exhibition, entitled Das Meisterstück (“The Masterpiece”) reveals how the palette is a kind of “indirect portrait” of the artist and of his pictorial technique.

Monumental photographs of the original palettes (c. 190 x 140 cm) provide an unprecedented historical key to the use of colour, organisation of space and brushwork of the “portrayed” artists. Since 2007, Schaller has worked on photographing the beauty of artists’ palettes, seen as a window onto their creative genius – almost abstract landscapes of their artistic production.

The exhibition features a selection of around twenty palettes, including those of Francis Bacon, Paul Cezanne, Marc Chagall, Gustave Courbet, Salvador Dalí, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, casting light on the principal European art movements, from Impressionism to Abstract Art.