HOMAGE TO MANZÙ
THE 2020 EDITION OF THE VENICE GLASS WEEK
It’s been over 20 years since Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga first made his entry in the glass world with an unshakeable determination to reinvent tradition. He started by designing objects, such as glasses, vases, and home décor accessories under the brand Giberto Venezia, founded with his wife Bianca. His passionate quest has been to marry the Murano glass master’s expertise to Art with a capital A. Inspired by one of the most extraordinary 20th Century Italian sculptors, Giacomo Manzù (1908-1991), whose art has been on show at Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna since 1956, Giberto began reflecting on how to transform the monumental Cardinale into a glass masterpiece to be presented at the 2020 edition of The Venice Glass Week. Starting from the original bronze, the designer collaborated with renowned Venetian artist Davide Battistin to sculpt a revisited and much smaller plaster version. Working with Murano glass master Giorgio Giuman, after having researched different materials and production processes, the cera persa, or lost wax, was used to create an orange and a black etched glass version. The Designer and the Maestro were not strangers to the traditional technique as they had already experimented with it for the creation of the bust of Ottaviano Augusto in 2010 and the Paolina Borghese in 2015, in collaboration with Factum Arte and now in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The process involved the making of the plaster mold, its transformation into wax, a subsequent plaster version and finally the glass casting. As with the creations presented during the past editions of the international festival, namely the Homage to Burri, Manzoni and Fontana in 2019, the replicas will be on show during the 2020 edition of The Venice Glass Week at Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, where they will be in dialogue with the original bronze. The exposition will be accompanied by a conference discussing the original sculpture, and more specifically the glass Homage to Manzù, where the designer Giberto Arrivabene will be conversing with Elisabetta Barisoni, head of Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Art Institute and of the Centro Studi Vetro at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Cristina Beltrami, the exhibition’s curator, and Davide Battistin.
