Born in Granada in 1871, Mariano Fortuny trained as a painter in Paris before settling in Venice at 18. Moving in international artistic circles, he befriended Gabriele D’Annunzio, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Marchesa Casati and Prinz Fritz Hohenlohe-Waldenburg, among others. He was fascinated by the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a total union of music, drama and visual presentation which he strove to realise in his set designs. In addition to his work for the theatre, he decorated aristocratic homes and museums. His luxury textiles were produced in a factory on the Guidecca in Venice and sold in shops in all European capitals. Towards the end of the 1930s Mariano Fortuny retired to a palace in the San Beneto district of Venice. Decorated by the artist, the palazzo now hosts the Fortuny Museum.
Currently on show at the museum is Futuruins. The exhibition focuses on the the multiple meanings attributed to ruins through the centuries. Works from Venetian Civic Museums, the State Hermitage Museum and other international collections explore the architectural and sculptural remains of the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian-Babylonian and Syrian civilisations. Contemporary art looks at the physical and moral ruins of today’s society. This is an exploration of the ruins of architecture, cities and suburbs, but also of men and ideas, as the result of time, negligence, degeneration, natural or political tragedies such as war and terrorism.
Ruins are an allegory for the inexorable passage of time, always uncertain and changeable, disputed between past and future, life and death, destruction and creation, Nature and Culture. The aesthetics of ruins is a crucial element in the history of Western civilisation. The ruin as concept symbolises the presence of the past but at the same time contains within itself the potential of the fragment. Fragments of antiquity, covered by the patina of time, hold cultural and symbolic implications that turn them into valid ‘foundation stones’ for building the future. Coming from the past, they confer a wealth of meaning on the present and offer an awareness to future projects.
Curated by Daniela Ferretti, Dimitri Ozerkov with Dario Dalla Lana, the exhibition includes works by such modern artists as Acconci Studio, Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Dubuffet, Anselm Kiefer, Alberto Burri. Franco Guerzoni, Christian Fogarolli, Giuseppe Amato, Renato Leotta and Renata De Bonis have realised new commissions for the event. In addition, the State Hermitage Museum has lent more than 80 pre-modern works, including paintings by Albrecht Dürer, Monsù Desiderio, Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Jacopo and Francesco Bassano, Parmigianino, Veronese, Jacob van Host the Elder, Arturo Nathan and Alessandro Algardi.
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IUAV, Venice, February 1 – 02, 2019
Survey exhibition of some 150 works, including painting, sculpture, photography, video art and works on paper, by nearly 100 artists, covering the five decades from 1968, when a new generation of Basque artists born in the 1940s was joining the art scene, to 2018 when art made by women has become increasingly prominent. It also assesses the importance that the individual and collective careers that emerged in the region have had on both Spanish and international art. The show’s point of departure will be the collection of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, which will be joined by important loans from private collections and fellow public institutions—such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, ARTIUM and the Kunstmuseum of Basel—that have placed particular emphasis on acquiring contemporary Basque art. The exhibition, which is curated in-house by Miriam Alzuri, Begoña González and Miguel Zugaza, will be accompanied by a catalogue. Click 
Throughout his career the Catalan painter Hermen Anglada-Camarasa (Barcelona 1871–1959 Pollença) worked mainly in the ‘modernista’ style. During WWI he travelled to Mallorca for the first time and eventually settled for the rest of his life in the north of the island, where in 1967, following the artist’s wishes his house in Pollença was turned into a museum. This exhibition in Palma de Mallorca displays a wide range of his paintings alongside his collection of costume, furniture and Japanese prints, in a setting evocative of his house.
The Museo del Prado has restored three paintings considered to be among the most important religious compositions by the leading Spanish Romantic artist Antonio María Esquivel. Esquivel’s work as the creator of religious paintings is barely known despite being among his principal artistic concerns. Now visitors can see The Fall of Lucifer, Christ the Saviour and other works, including a Self-Portrait. The exhibition has been curated by Javier Barón, Prado Senior Curator Nineteenth-century Painting at the Prado.
Bard Graduate Center welcomes submissions for the 2018 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize, awarded annually to the best book on the decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas. The prize will reward scholarly excellence and commitment to cross-disciplinary conversation. Eligible titles include monographs, exhibition catalogues, and collections of essays in any language, published in print or in digital format. The winning author(s) or editor(s) will be chosen by a committee of Bard Graduate Center faculty and will be honored with a symposium on the subject of the book. Submissions must have a 2018 publication date.
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