BEVERLY PEPPER ART IN THE OPEN
58a Biennale VENEZIA – Maggio 2019
The exhibition Beverly Pepper. Art in The Open brings the great American sculptor – who has lived and worked in Italy for over half a century – front and center in the Venice Biennale of Art, to which she participated in 1972 during its 36th edition. This exhibition, curated by Italian art critic Massimo Mattioli and promoted and organized by the Fondazione Progetti Beverly Pepper in collaboration with the City of Todi and the Region of Umbria, is part of a series of events which kicked off in 2018 to homage the work and legacy of the artist in Italy. The apex and conclusion of this celebration will be the inauguration of the Beverly Pepper Sculpture Park, where 20 monumental sculptures will be installed for the benefit of the public in the town of Todi, Umbria, of which she is an honorary citizen.
The choice of the ideal space of this exhibition – which is a crowning moment in this year-long homage to the artwork of Beverly Pepper – naturally fel! on the Spazio Thetis, where Tour large-scale sculptures – the originai Todi Columns – have been permanently installed since Pepper’s donation in the ’90s to the Civic Museums of Venice. For this exhibition, two new Cor-ten monumental sculptures will also be installed in the scenic courtyard of the Spazio Thetis. The exhibition also comprises of unpublished photographs by renowned art photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni – already established in the Biennale of Venice of 1979 and 1993 – who has documented the career and work of the American sculptor since the end of the 1970s, and of the video-documentary Beverly Pepper’s Umbria, produced with the support of the Region of Umbria.