Jenny Saville

The heart of the Italian renaissance hosted a major exhibition by Jenny Saville, a member of the Young British Artists and one of the most interesting painters on the international art scene. The exhibition, promoted by the City of Florence, organized by MUS.E and supported by Gagosian, features one of the most important paintings in Saville’s production during the 90’s and some works expressly realized for this striking occasion, in intimate communication with the historic and ancient surroundings of the locations.

Saville’s works almost transcend the limits between figurative and abstract. The artist is able to represent faces, bodies, flesh and nudity to generate a universal image that has the power to act within and against us. Saville overcomes postmodernism to re-establish a dialogue with the great European pictorial tradition in constant comparison with the modernism of Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly and the portraits of Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon.

The exhibition, curated by Sergio Risaliti, takes over the city of Florence with a project articulated in some of the most important historical building and museums in Florence, such as Museo Novecento, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Museo degli Innocenti and Museo di Casa Buonarroti.

The main venue, Museo Novecento, hosts a wide selection of almost 100 paintings and drawings that cover the majority of Saville’s career. The exhibition, conceived in dialogue with the suggestive renaissance settings, presents a window in the external gallery of the museum through which it is possible to admire “Rosetta II” (2000-06), a monumental portrait of a blind woman hung above the altar inside the former church of the Spedale. This facilitates the dialogue between Saville’s artworks and Italian art history, in a confrontation with the wooden Crucifix of Giotto suspended in the centre of the nave of Santa Maria Novella, clearly visible from the outside of the churchyard.