Anish Kapoor will be the first British artist to be honoured with a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice during the Venice Biennale next year opening on 20th April 2022 and running until 9th October 2022.
The exhibition will have retrospective elements alongside newer bodies of work, presenting key moments in the artist’s career. Ground-breaking new works, created using carbon nanotechnology, will be shown for the first time, as well as recent paintings and sculpture that are testament to the vitality and visionary nature of Kapoor’s current practice.
“It’s a huge honour to be invited to engage with the collections at the Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice, perhaps one of the finest collections of classical painting anywhere in the world. All art must engage with what went before. The Accademia presents a wonderful and wondrous challenge. I feel a deep commitment to Venice, its architecture and its support for the contemporary arts.”
Anish Kapoor
As announced today, 12th November 2021, during a press conference held at the museum in the presence of the Director Giulio Manieri Elia, the curator of the exhibition, Taco Dibbits and Anish Kapoor, in addition to the main show at the Gallerie dell’ Accademia, a group of important works will also be presented at the historic Palazzo Manfrin, where some of the most famous works in the Gallerie dell’ Accademia’s collection originally hung.
Palazzo Manfrin was purchased in 1788 by Count Girolamo Manfrin, a wealthy tobacco merchant who transformed the first floor of the building into a picture gallery which quickly became one of Venice’s major tourist attractions visited by among others Antonio Canova, Lord Byron, John Ruskin and Edouard Manet.
When, around the middle of the nineteenth century, works in the collection were sold, after the death of Manfrin, the heritage of the Gallerie dell’Accademia was enriched with twenty-one paintings including masterpieces such as Giorgione’s The Tempest and La Vecchia and works by Mantegna, Memling, Nicolò di Pietro, Girolamo Savoldo and Moretto.
“All artists, however cutting-edge and contemporary, are in debate with those who have gone before. The Gallerie dell’Accademia is the perfect site for a modern master to explore the themes that have always engaged sculptors and painters. Kapoor’s latest works, using the most advanced nanotechnology, promise to be a revelation.”
Taco Dibbits
Gallerie dell’Accademia Campo della Carità, Dorsoduro 1050, Venezia www.gallerieaccademia.it
Palazzo Manfrin Fondamenta Venier, Cannaregio, 342, 30121 Venezia
About the artist
Anish Kapoor is considered to be one of the most influential artists working today. Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, he now lives and works in London. His works are permanently exhibited in the most important collections and museums around the world from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate in London; at the Prada Foundation in Milan; at the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Modern Art Oxford, U.K (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, U.K (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2019); Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemorânea, Porto, Portugal (2018); University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City (2016); Château de Versailles, France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (2015); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); Sak?p Sabanc?Müzesi, Istanbul (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).
Anish Kapoor represented Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 where he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 1991 he won the Turner Prize and has gone on to receive numerous international awards including the Praemium Imperialein 2011 and Padma Bhushan in 2012. He received a CBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to the visual arts.
Also renowned for his architecturally-scaled works, public projects include: Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Leviathan (2011) exhibited at 2011 Monumenta, Paris; Orbit (2012), Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for Lucerne Festival, Japan (2013-) and Descension, (2014) most recently installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA (2017).
