Among the major scholars of programmed art and spatialism, he has signed exhibitions in the most prestigious Italian and foreign museums
Giovanni Granzotto is one of the best known Italian critics and, probably, the greatest scholar of European programmed art and spatialism, at least in relation to the Venetian side. However, he prefers to consider himself a small provincial patron - perhaps the last patron.
I meet him in his Venetian house in Cannaregio, almost halfway between Madonna dell’Orto and Misericordia. He has just curated, in collaboration with Stefano Cecchetto and Antonella Alban, two exhibitions that are born to integrate: “Tancredi Guidi Morandis Licata, four spatialist anniversaries”, in his Sacile at Palazzo Ragazzoni, and in Crocetta del Montello at Villa Ancilotto. They tell, with almost 160 works in total, the path of these masters wanting to remember in the anniversaries of their death, occurred 60, 40, 30 and 10 years ago.
He curated the Biasi great exhibition at the Ara Pacis in Rome, considered among the most engaging of the last 20 years
So, Giovanni, I haven’t seen you in more than seven years. What have you done during this time?
I start from the end, from these two exhibitions to which I am very attached, because first of all Guidi (to whom I owe a good part of my artistic education through the continuous pilgrimages in his Venetian studio in calle Vallaresso, in the 70’s) and then Tancredi, Morandis and Licata - a friend for life - are some of the artists I loved, and that, in my opinion, have left deep traces in the history of art in Venice. At Villa Ancilotto in Crocetta del Montello, in 2020 and 2021 I had already curated, with the support of Art Dolomites friends, two significant events on the “Silent Revolution of art in Veneto”, focusing on the decades before and after the Second World War, with works by Gino Rossi, Moggioli, de Pisis, Guidi, Music, Deluigi, Vedova, etc. At Palazzo Ragazzoni, since the 70s, almost the entire art world had passed, with very relevant exhibitions for a provincial city, but then everything was a little stopped by the aging of the Palace, no longer in accordance with the new requirements of safety and usability. After a fantastic restyling (it became a small Pompidou), it was reopened with this exhibition.
In the 1970s, he attended Guidi's studio in Venice, where he received much of his artistic training
But before the spacialist anniversaries, what did you do?
I have been touring the peninsula with Gilbert Hsiao, the greatest living American optical artist, with Claudio Rotta Loria and Jorrit Tornquist (one of the geniuses of contemporary culture), but also with the younger Marcello De Angelis, Sandi Renko and Domenico D’Oora, and with my fellow countrymen Sergio Colussa, Mara Fabbro, Alberto Pasqual, and the extraordinary Tommaso Bet. Many museums, such as San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome, the Doge’s Palace in Mantua, the MACA of Acri, and then the Castle of Monferrato in Casale Monferrato. Not to forget Umberto Mariani who, after San Vitale in Ravenna and Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, I accompanied to the Hermitage of Saint Petersburg.
At the Hermitage you have curated many exhibitions in the first ten years of 2000.
I used to go there often (now you can’t) with Biasi, Licata, Afro, the GRAV, Mariani. Saint Petersburg is also a magical city, where I left many friends and memories. And I left them in all the museums of Russia which, after the fall of the wall, had opened with great enthusiasm to our culture: National Gallery of Prague, Zagreb and Ljubljana, Moma of Moscow, National Museum of Ljubljana, among others.
You mention the Monferrato Castle. Even for castles you have a special predisposition.
I would miss the Loire and Scottish ones, but in Italy I have missed a few: Castel dell’Ovo in Naples, Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, the Svevo-Aragonese castles of Bari and Trani, the Castello dell’Aquila, etc. Bringing important exhibitions in these strongholds, bulwarks of our history and culture, always seemed to me a testimony almost due from our present, a sign of gratitude of contemporaneity. But as you know, more generally it is the contamination between the ancient, history above all, and the contemporary, which has always fascinated me: introducing avant-garde, spatialism, programmed art in the sacraries of the art of the past, was for me an irresistible motivation, a kind of challenge. And so, after having accompanied the most beloved artists in some of the places symbols of art and culture in the world, such as the Hermitage, but also Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Urbino and Mantua, and Mantova Palazzo Te, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, the Mausoleum of Theodoric and San Vitale in Ravenna, the Royal Palace in Genoa, Turin and Naples, the Palazzo dei Normanni and the Loggiato di San Bartolomeo in Palermo, the Museo Civico in Arezzo the Cathedral Museum and the Maritime Museum in Barcelona, in recent years I have wanted to resume those trips and touch new landings.
At the Hermitage of Saint Petersburg, he realized exhibitions of Afro, BIASI, Licata, among others
So where did you land?
Two places among all: the Ca’ d'Oro in Venice, where we placed the third part of the pharaohs anthology dedicated to Virgilio Guidi, while the other two sections were hosted in the rooms of the Bevilacqua La Masa at San Marco and Palazzetto Tito. At the Ca’ d'Oro, Guidi’s early-century paintings magically interacted with the antique paintings in the Franchetti collection. At Bevilacqua La Masa in 2018, or rather in 3 Bevilacqua locations, before the exhibition on Guidi, I curated the most complete exhibition ever organized in Italy on Spatialism: a true marvel!
And then, where else?
At the Ara Pacis in Rome. Here, Alberto Biasi presented his most beautiful, complete and intriguing exhibition, in which the paintings alternated with environments seemed to be born and lived within that sacred place. An exhibition considered among the most important and engaging in the last 20 years in the capital.
So you think the exhibitions in traditional venues are daughters of a minor God?
No, no, for goodness’ sake. First of all, there is the caliber of the exhibition that depends on the quality and its interpenetration with the venue, whether it is old or modern. In my heart, the exhibitions in museums of Latin America, or at the National Gallery in Prague, or at the Gnam in Rome, or the monumental “Paths among the Biennales” in the Pordenone Modern Art Gallery are always in the first places. To this we add, in recent years, when the Covid began to overwhelm us, the two tributes to Lucio Fontana at the Archaeological Museum of Aosta and the Gallery of Contemporary Art of Monfalcone.
MORANDIS IS AMONG THE ARTISTS HE LOVED AND THAT HAVE LEFT TRACES IN THE VENETIAN HISTORY
Now, what are you planning?
I would like to arrive, and maybe we do it, in some sacred places of history where I have not yet come down: The MANN in Naples (or Capodimonte), the Pinacoteca ambrosiana in Milan, and, who knows, even the Uffizi. I would like to bring Alberto Biasi, Pablo Atchugarry, Getulio Alviani and my inevitable travel companions: Guidi, Afro, Vedova, Tancredi, Morandis, Licata. In addition, coinciding with the upcoming Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, there should be a really important event at Ca’ Pesaro. If so, my inseparable friends from the Euromobil Group will also accompany me on these adventures: the Lucchetta brothers.
You have been threatening to retire in 2026, at 75 years old. But are you sure: no regrets and not even some dream yet to be realized?
Indeed, I promised my family and myself. We hope to be able to keep it. There is a huge regret: not having succeeded, with example or authority, to communicate to the major Italian art operators the need (and I would add a little’ moral obligation) to work not only for them, but also for artists regardless. To stop the rush and to focus more on projects, promotion and exploitation. They would eventually do themselves a favour, as well as the artists and the market. That’s why I consider myself the last patron (without more resources) of the province. For dreams I have one, or rather two: the MoMA in New York, exclusively a dream, and the Venice Pavilion at the Biennale, which I always imagined not as a showcase, for young or old, but as a piece of a mosaic in which Venice finally becomes the main, or at least decisive, actress of its Biennale. The Pavilion as the vital center of a “mobile party” of the city. They had promised me several times (and even entrusted on an occasion, then suddenly faded); I probably will not make time to see Venice as the true Queen of its Biennale.
