Guggenheim

Carlo Cardazzo: A New Vision of Art

The celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Peggy Guggenheim’s arrival in Venice will coincide, in the fall, with the exhibition devoted to the Venetian Carlo Cardazzo (1908–1963), whose centenary falls this year. He is a major, yet until now neglected, figure in 20th-century Italian and international art and culture, who also enjoyed a deep intellectual relationship with Peggy Guggenheim.

The exhibition—the first entirely dedicated to this patron, collector, and art dealer—will show the public the variety of his interests and the extraordinary modernity of his understanding and promoting of art—not only through his galleries, but above all through his innovative cultural strategies. The first part of the exhibition will reconfigure his collection, which in the 1930s and 1940s was considered one of the most important collections of 20th-century Italian art, comprising masterpieces by Marini, de Chirico, Scipione, Sironi, and Campigli. The exhibition will then examine Cardazzo’s relationship with the architect Carlo Scarpa, whom Cardazzo commissioned for numerous projects—the Galleria del Cavallino; a second gallery in Venice, in Frezzeria; and the important Book Pavilion in the Biennale Gardens. An exhibition gallery will be dedicated to the Edizioni del Cavallino, the publishing company with which Cardazzo began his forays into the world of contemporary art. The exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection will allow the public to enjoy a selection of masterpieces, documents, objects, publications, and manuscripts that offer a new and surprisingly international picture of the complex and fascinating entourage of Carlo Cardazzo.

This exhibition and its catalogue are made possible by Paolo and Gabriella Cardazzo, Regione del Veneto, Mondadori Electa Spa, and The Murray & Isabella Rayburn Foundation, thanks to the generosity of Maurice Kanbar, Wuerth, Tratto, Hangar Design Group.