Visiting the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice requires some planning. Visitors are required to book in advance and through the foundation's site or, as an alternative, book once they get there, but exclusively online, so it is vital to have a mobile device with an Internet connection with you and, obviously, a credit card.
Tours are guided by a facilitator escorting the visitors around the building, while explanations or historical notions are delivered via an app on an individual smartphone that visitors receive when the tour starts.
This arrangement is in place as the Fondazione includes a functioning library and a research centre, besides the venue can be hired for private events, so visitors are required to maintain silence and refrain from making excessive noise. The arrangement also implies that, if there is an exhibition in some of the spaces of the Fondazione, there are only a few minutes to see it, which can be rather annoying.
At the moment, for example, there is an exhibition of drawings by Luciano Baldessari in one of the cells (the Fondazione is located in the spaces previously occupied by a Benedictine monastery) along the Manica Lunga Library.
Restored by Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, the Manica Lunga was built in the 15th century by Giovanni Buora and served as the dormitory of the Benedictine order on the Venetian island of San Giorgio (the entrances to the cells where the monks used to sleep can still be seen along the narrow central corridor of the Manica Lunga).
"Luciano Baldessari. Architetture per la scena" (Luciano Baldessari. Architectures for the stage, until 26th November in conjunction with the Biennale Architettura 2023), actually features drawings for a variety of projects and also includes his Luminator mannequin-lamp.
Curated by Anna Chiara Cimoli, lecturer at the University of Bergamo, the compact exhibition occupies only one room of the ex-dormitory and showcases the artistic contributions of an influential yet often overlooked figure in 20th-century architecture and design.
This project aims to shed light on his innovative approach and delve into his involvement with the historical avant-gardes across Europe and the United States.
Luciano Baldessari was born in 1896 in Rovereto where he completed his studies. He trained in Rovereto as a Futurist artist at Luigi Comel's school, alongside Depero, then in Vienna (where he completed technical studies in 1916), and Milan (where he graduated from the Politecnico in 1922).
From 1922 to 1926, he spent an extended period in Berlin, where he apprenticed, becoming acquainted with the great artists, actors, scenographers, and architects of the time. It was during this period that he consistently worked in theater, creating vibrant set designs.
After a brief spell in Paris, he returned to Milan in 1929, where he would remain until the outbreak of World War II. Around this period he worked on a series of installation including the Silk Exhibition at Villa Olmo in Como (1927), the Bernocchi Pavilion at the 10th International Fair in Milan (1929), Bar Craja (1930), and the Ultimoda DAF store (1935-1936). In the 1940s, Baldessari moved to New York, where he mainly worked as a set designer for the theatre.
Largely forgotten, probably because he was an eclectic figure who refused to be pigeonholed and to belong to associations and corporations, Baldessari is now being rediscovered through exhibitions and through the digitalisation of his drawings and sketches (sourced from the collection of Milan-based CASVA-Centro di Alti Studi per le Arti Visive).
This comprehensive overview at the Fondazione Cini highlights Baldessari's notable contributions to set design from the 1920s to the 1940s, showcasing his collaborations with renowned figures, including Max Reinhardt (for Shakespeare's "Hamlet", 1923-24, and George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan", 1924), Riccardo Zandonai ("Giuliano", 1927), Tatiana Pavlova and Luigi Chiarelli.
In the exhibition at the Cini Foundation there are also sketches for Rossini's "Guglielmo Tell" (1929), Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1932) and "Henry IV" (1944) and Claude Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" (1941-44) for the Mexico City Theatre.
Baldessari designed dynamic sets and scenes in which chiaroscuro techniques were employed to animate the various spaces and environments. The architect also had a penchant for creating on his sets hidden spaces around corners and curves, playing in this way with perspectives and building more complex environments.
There are several connections between Baldessari and fashion: between the two World Wars, the architect worked on installations for the textile industry.
This connection started after he met in 1927 textile industrialist Carlo De Angeli Frua, who enlisted him to design the Cantoni showroom in Milan (1929), the DAF stand at the 4th Triennale in Monza (1930), the 1st National Fashion Exhibition in Turin (1933), the 5th and 6th Triennale in Milan (1933 and 1936), the DAF Pavilion at the International Fair in Milan (1936), and the window shop of Ultimoda DAF in Milan (1935-1936).
The work for the textile manufacturing company represented for Baldessari an opportunity to create commercial installations with a theatrical twist about them. The architect employed fabrics to dynamically shape the space he was designing, as if they were key elements of the theatrical mise-en-scène. Besides, there is also an arty intention behind his textile installations: the fluttering silk fabrics in the Silk Exhibition at Villa Olmo in Como (1927), the long drapes in the Bernocchi Pavilion at the 10th International Fair in Milan and the Italian Textile Stand at the International Expo in Barcelona (1929) were meant to create vibrant brushstrokes of colour that interacted with the sparse elements of furnishings, softening their angularity.
For Baldessari his textile installations weren't mere structures to display objects, but they themselves were an exhibition. In the space outlined in the sketches and archival photographs, the fabric-carrying mannequins stand out as protagonists of the scene.
In one case (the Como exhibition in 1927) Baldessari employed the sculptural creations of Ukrainian avant-garde sculptor Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko; in others he integrated his Luminator lamp.
The Luminator mannequin-lamp-sculpture (currently produced by Codiceicona) is the perfect synthesis of Baldessari's main interest - blurring the boundaries between dance, theatre, design and fashion as well.
The Luminator was indeed supposed to be a textile support, but looked like a statue, yet it could move as it could rotate and spin like a dancer, but was as functional as a design object should be and could illuminate a space and create unusual light refractions.
Originally presented at the 1929 Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, it paid homage to the Futurist movement while also reflecting the influences of Bauhaus culture that Baldessari absorbed during his time in Berlin.
Baldessari reached the peak of inventive complexity in the visionary drawings of 1940 for Elizabeth Arden's Fashion Theater in New York: some of them are included in this exhibition and show a theater space conceived in a classical manner with a frontal stage but enriched with pictorial inserts on the ceiling and side walls.
Baldessari populated Arden's fashion theatre with metaphysical mannequins and mannequin-shaped Luminators, elements that created a polysymphonic composition.
Other more scenographic drawings depict overlapping levels, axonometric cross-sections that introduce fantasy universes populated by female figures in long dresses and wide-brimmed hats and strange animals.
A tripartite drawing shows an exhibition system (possibly for fashion accessories) with zenithal lighting, that pre-dated the use of this solution in art exhibitions organised in the '50s.
Even though, this is an extremely compact event, it offers some insights into the life and works of Luciano Baldessari, inviting visitors to explore the intersections of art, design, and architectural innovation that defined his career.
Thinking you may miss it? Don't despair: the materials on display at the Cini Foundation are preserved in the Baldessari Archive at CASVA, and most of them can be checked online. In fact the archive allows to discover even more works - including projects for textile fairs, designs for shops such as the shoe store Calzaturificio di Varese, and fashion events like the Fashion Exhibition at Venice's Hotel Excelsior in 1928 - that may prove inspiring especially for designers interested in developing spaces with a theatrical twist about them for retail, trade shows, and expos.
Image credits for this post
All images by Anna Battista except:
7. Hamlet, 1923-1924
Watercolor ink and watercolor on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Act I, Scene V), for Max Reinhardt, not realized.
8. Henry IV, 1930
Tempera on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello, not realized.
12. Giuliano, 1927
Pastel on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for Giuliano by Riccardo Zandonai (Act II), not realized.
13. Il vascello fantasma, 1928
Watercolor and pencil on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for Il vascello fantasma by E. Lothar-Richter, performed at Teatro Olimpia in Milan on June 25, 1928. Directed by Tatiana Pavlova.
15. Modernità, 1925
Pencil on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Cinematic set design for Modernità, not realized.
16. The Knights of Ekebù, 1929
Watercolor ink on beige paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for The Knights of Ekebù by Riccardo Zandonai, not realized.
17 - 18. DAFMI stand, Italian Fashion Exhibition, Turin, 1933
19. Bernocchi Pavilion and Luminator, International Fair of Milan, 1929
23 - 24. Elizabeth Arden's Fashion Theater, 1940
Pencil on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Design for Elizabeth Arden's Fashion Theater in New York.
26. Henry IV, 1944
Tempera on paper, CASVA-Comune di Milano.
Theatrical set design for Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello, not realized.
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