Glass works by two important artists, the Santillanas, are on display at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the Island of San Giorgio.
The
“I Santillana” exhibition, with works by Laura De Santillana and Alessandro Diaz De Santillana, was inaugurated on 6 April 2014 on the
island of San Giorgio,
Venice. The exhibition is part of a cultural project by the
Cini Foundation and
Pentagram Stiftung entitled “
Le Stanze del Vetro” (The Glass Rooms), which promotes contemporary glass artists.
The narrative model has been changed from that of previous exhibitions (
Carlo Scarpa and
Napoleon Martinuzzi, “Fragile”). The preference here was to create an exhibition tour that develops a dialogue and comparison between the diverse poetries of two artists. In this case, they are sister and brother,
Laura De Santillana and
Alexander Diaz De Santillana, from a legendary dynasty that includes their father, Lodovico Diaz De Santillana, and their grandfather,
Paolo Venini. Throughout their artistic careers, both have explored the potential and innumerable expressions of glass, but in absolutely individual and personal ways.
The exhibition features approximately 170 works, including sculptures and works in glass from the 1980s up to the present, together with a series of new works specially designed and created for the
Venetian exhibition. This is not a joint production, but an exploration of the language of the two artists, one focused on transparency and colour, and the other dedicated to work on flat and reflective surfaces, in which colour disappears.
The eight rooms containing the artists’ works, some individually and others displaying them in comparison, are emotively linked by the central corridor, “La Rue”, conceived of as a biographical account in which the individual artistic careers of
Laura De Santillana and
Alexander Diaz De Santillana meet to reflect on the theme of memory.
Free admission
Opening hours: from 10.00 am to 7.00 pm, closed on Wednesdays.
