In Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts hosts an exhibition of the collection of the State Hermitage Museum «palaces, ruins and dungeons. Giovanni Battista Piranesi ", representing 59 major works by the Italian master of etching

Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts,
November 14, 2012 - 24 February 2013
Yekaterinburg, trans. Vojvodina, 5

in Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts opened an exhibition from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum «palaces, ruins and dungeons. Giovanni Battista Piranesi ».

The exhibition features 59 works by Piranesi - the largest Italian master of etching, engraving, painter and architect (1720-1778), as well as an engraved portrait of the artist himself, made him a contemporary Felice Polantsani.

In 1740 a young Venetian Giovanni Battista Piranesi, then almost anyone else unknown artist, being in Rome, made his first steps to stardom. Piranesi was then created most of his fantastic compositions. These works do not become famous during his lifetime, but then the original and strange product series Prima Parte («Prima Parte") Grotteschi («Grotesques") and Carceri («Dungeon") have been recognized as the most innovative paradoxical and his creations. fourth section of the exhibition is a series of prints «Vedute di Roma» («Sights of Rome»).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi firmly entrenched in the history of the artist, which established the European art of the middle of XVIII - early XIX century. It is recognized as a reformer in the field of flavor and one of the protagonists of neo-classicism, a kind of vanguard of the XVIII century, so his name is associated in the first place with this direction. However, little noticed in his life a series of etchings entitled Carceri, a strange series of unexplained dark scary images for many decades ahead of its time. Carceri become one of the most beloved works of modernism. Not particularly popular with the artist's life, re-open the romanticism, this series again attracted and attracts writers, architects, film directors. It was a landmark product for the romantics and symbolists, futurists, surrealists. Baudelaire and Gautier, Escher, Dali, Fritz Lang and Sergei Eisenstein apply to works by Piranesi in his work. Influenced prints artist created the sets for "Hamlet" by Shakespeare and Beethoven's opera "Fidelio." His architectural ideas inspired architects of totalitarian regimes, and at the same time, it has become almost a favorite architect of post-modernism. According to the number of responses and quotes in the art of XX century Piranesi among the artists of his time, is the first place going into modernism.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi drawbridge. Sheet from a series Carceri. III status. 1761 Etching, cutter Source: hermitagemuseum.org

Giovanni Battista Piranesi Part vast majestic harbor. 1749-1750 Etching, cutter, drypoint Source: hermitagemuseum.org

exhibition gives an insight into the depths of the extraordinary imagination of the master prints, which were called "paper architect" : for all his life, he built only one building, while the rest remained bold ideas embodied on paper. Additionally, visitors can see the beauty of the architecture of Rome, the "Eternal City" in detail portrayed a great artist.

Curators - Vasily Mikhailovich Assumption, a junior researcher in the Department of Western European Art of the State Hermitage Museum, and Arkady V. Ippolitov, senior researcher in the Department of Western European Art of the State Hermitage Museum.

Source: hermitagemuseum.org