Frammenti Expo ‘67: Alexander Calder and Emilio Vedova

In conjunction with the world Expo 2015 in Milan, the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova is presenting Frammenti Expo ’67: Alexander Calder e Emilio Vedova from May 6 to October 18, 2015: two exhibitions designed by Italo Rota, in which visitors may see the contributions of Alexander Calder and Emilio Vedova to the Montreal Expo in 1967.

The theme of the 1967 Expo focused on the activities of humans in modern society and was “Terre des Hommes / Man and His World”, drawing inspiration from the 1939 book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes.

Frammenti Expo ’67: Alexander Calder
The exhibition, curated by Germano Celant and produced in collaboration with the Calder Foundation in New York, illustrates in the Spazio Vedova with models, film and photographs of 1967 the Alexander Calder intervention for the Montreal Expo.

The maquettes on display bear witness to Calder’s working method. For his stabiles (standing abstract sculptures), the artist would make small-scale models which, once selected by the patrons to become monumental in size, were scaled up to an intermediate size (intermediate maquettes) before, finally, being made full-size in the Etablissements Biémont foundry at Tours, not far from Calder’s house at Saché in the Loire valley.

Trois Disques / Three Disks, the original maquette of Calder’s work for the 1967 Expo is on display in Venice. The title was changed to The Man / L’Homme accordingly to the Expo’s theme.
In order to provide a context for Calder’s sculpture, the exhibition is enriched with photographs by Ugo Mulas.

Frammenti Expo ’67: Emilio Vedova
Curated by Germano Celant with Fabrizio Gazzarri in the Magazzino del Sale, “Frammenti Expo ’67: Emilio Vedova” offers the public a reinterpretation of the original mode of projection for the Expo.

For the reconstruction, the original “rotating form” is used. This was made ad hoc of aluminium laminated and mounted at the centre of the space, between the screens and projectors of the Percorso/Plurimo/Luce, creating an element that was reflected and at the same time reflected onto the screens and public. Visitors would walk within the installation and between the projections, becoming a part of Emilio Vedova‘s work. The exhibition includes a comprehensive documentation with plans, drawings and period photographs.

In the Magazzini del Sale, beyond the Percorso/Plurimo/Luce, the machine designed by Renzo Piano will be reactivated, enabling some paintings from the De America cycle, realised by Vedova in 1976, to be presented by the moving shuttles, for the first time in Venice, together with some work of the eighties. The works, all in black and white and of an extraordinary pictorial rigour and visual impact, hark back to the artist’s experiences in the United States, matured on several occasions from the fifties onwards. In this way, two different aspects of Emilio Vedova‘s research will be presented: his work on space and light for the Expo project and the investigation into matter and pictorial gesture.