Venice Unveils Stunning New Art Spaces

As the Architecture Biennale previewed in Venice last week, visitors were also treated to the unveiling of a new home for the art foundation of Nicoletta Fiorucci, and a stunning new exhibition space, called SMAC, right on Saint Mark’s Square. Meanwhile, the superstar Belgian artist Luc Tuymans had accepted a last-minute commission from the Abbot of the Palladian church San Giorgio Maggiore: to replace two paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto with two large-scale paintings of his own.

Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation

In 2010, the Italian Nicoletta Fiorucci, originally from Rome, established the Fiorucci Arts Trust in London, to enable the development of emerging artists’ careers and to support work of a less commercial nature. The latest venture is her acquisition of a historic palazzo (or building) in December 2024 in Venice, on a peaceful canal in the San Barnaba area. (She has been living in Venice since October 2024 in a rented apartment nearby). It opened to visitors on May 10.

“The palazzo was a wreck–completely abandoned, no water, no electricity,” says Fiorucci, looking blonde, tanned, and perfectly relaxed in spite of a recent hip operation and the delivery of this new initiative. “But it’s already become a place where artists can carry out their dreams.” After a minor amount of work on the interior–which housed the studio of the painter Ettore Tito in the 1920s–the Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili lived and worked in the building for several months, gradually creating an exhibition of her work and that of others. “She has brought attention to things that would normally be thrown out,” says Fiorucci, of the sculptures Astakhishvili has made from forgotten plastic tubing, metal rods, broken sanitary ware and drywall plaster left behind in the rooms. “It is about bringing circularity to materials. To look at what is already there.”

While Astakhishvili’s delicate drawings, made directly onto the walls, connect to the number of drawings in Fiorucci’s own collection, other works include Thea Djordjadze’s aluminum sculptures and collaged magazine pages by Maka Sanadze. It’s a rough and gritty antidote to Venice’s more luxurious charms. “It’s challenging stuff,” says Fiorucci, “but taking these risks keeps me excited.”

SMAC (San Marco Art Centre)

On the second floor of a storied building right on Saint Mark’s Square, which once provided small apartments for the city’s lawyers, is a new centre for contemporary art that will show everything from fashion to architecture to fine art. The exquisite enfilade of sixteen rooms has been restored by the British architect David Chipperfield and the team in his Milan office and is currently divided between two exhibitions. One is dedicated to the deceased Australian modernist architect Harry Seidler; the other to Korea’s first female landscape architect, Jung Youngsun.

Seidler’s wife and architectural collaborator, Pamela, explains that incorporating art into each project was key to their work. “Harry saw it as a fundamental part of architecture. We visited all the artists – Henry Moore in England, Isamu Noguchi and Sol Le Witt in the U.S.,” says Seidler, a very chic 86-year old. “When we went to see Alexander Calder where he lived in Roxbury, Connecticut, I sat next to Arthur Miller at lunch. He didn’t say much, but when he did, it was quite a statement. He was very attractive.”

Seidler had escaped to England from Nazi-invaded Vienna aged 15, and been interned in a Canadian camp during the war. (His camp-issue denim shirt, with a huge red circle on its back, is on show here: he smuggled it out when he left.) Seidler went on to study at Black Mountain College in the US before settling in Australia. The sensibility of both European and American modernism was played out in his work, and pervades this beautiful exhibition.

Jung Youngsun, now aged 84 and still running her studio, became a landscape designer when the discipline was introduced to Korea in the 1970s, part of the drive to rebuild the country after its war-time desecration. Working in both urban and leisure contexts, Jung’s deep belief is in the restorative power of nature. “I live in the countryside now,” says Jung and points at the brilliant yellow hangings that punctuate the exhibition. “That’s where the color comes from–the fields of buttercups that surround my home.”

Luc Tuymans at the Abbazia Di San Giorgio Maggiore

Luc Tuymans cuts an imposing figure in his voluminous black Jil Sander coat outside the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, designed by Andrea Palladio and built from 1566 to 1610. “I’ve never missed a deadline. I’m not a prima donna,” he says, though as one of the most respected painters of his generation he has every right. Instead, he accepted a last- minute commission from the Abbot of San Giorgio to create two huge paintings, 4×6 metres each, to replace the pair by Jacopo Tintoretto which have flanked the altar since the church opened. Those by the 16^th century artist–The Last Supper and The People of Israel in the Desert–are currently being cleaned and restored in full public view in a space behind the altar. The tight timeframe meant that Tuymans made his paintings in just two weeks. They will remain in place until late November, when the freshly restored Tintoretto’s will be rehung.

“Visitors might well be disturbed by my work,” admits Tuymans. “When they come to a church like this in Venice, they expect something very different, something historic.” Instead they will find two dramatically different works on either side of an altar bearing a polished golden sphere. On the left, ghostly blue figures seem to shimmer and fade against a black background; on the right is a fiery triangle of glaring orange-red circles. The works are called Musicians and Heat. “Together, the images represent cold and hot. Purgatory and hell,” says Tuymans. “Though the orange heat lamps in the right-hand picture form a kind of trinity, and could also be seen as bringing warmth to the quite chilly interior of the church.”

The decidedly un-Baroque nature of Tuymans paintings provides a stark contrast with the church’s soaring architecture as well as the ornate carving of the wooden furniture below the canvases. “That was made by craftsmen from Antwerp,” says Tuymans, who also comes from the Belgian city. “Perhaps this represents a Belgian-Italian rapprochement.”

Tuymans often deals with how we confront and ignore history and carry and deny memory. Here he describes his preoccupations as “heat and disintegration”. The key move, however, is the integration of the work into the architecture itself and its visibility in such a public space. “The Abbot reminded me the other day that his church is a living place, that is used by the congregation who come here to worship,” says Tuymans. “For me, as an artist, it is really important to work at a social and public level.” With the added bonus that he gets to shock the odd tourist or two.