Fondazione Augusto Rancilio is pleased to present the major exhibition of Contemporary Art 2024:
DOMANI. Jacques Martinez at Villa Arconati
edited by Martina Bortoluzzi and Valeria Foglia
from 7 April to 13 October 2024 - Exhibition Wing of Villa Arconati
The exhibition, which will develop over the course of 2024 in four exhibition venues - in addition to Villa Arconati in Venice, Lugano and Nice - aims to be a "perspective" on over fifty years of study by the artist Jacques Martinez, who this summer will celebrate his 80th birthday.
There will be four cardinal points of this "story": Abstraction; Man, figure, body; Landscape; Still life.
This is the genesis of DOMANI, from the artist's direct words: "Domani. Why this title for my four projects in 2024? Because of the last Italian song festival of Sanremo! Well yes, among these popular songs, with all their pleasant limits, between the fake rap and the all-Italian love song, there was a moment of unexpected, lucky surprise... a man (Giovanni Allevi) enters the scene, still young, very thin, already with gray hair. A man and his story, two years of a serious, very serious illness, with days that one senses were the closest to death. But that evening he was alive, very alive, a little trembling from the emotion before of applause, and certainly still a little tired. So, he begins to play, alone at the piano, in the most respectful silence of the room. Previously, he had time to talk about Immanuel Kant, yes, Kant in Sanremo. He also shared the title of his music. Tomorrow! I kept the positive statement. Tomorrow."
JACQUES MARTINEZ
Born in El-Biar, a small village in the hills above Algiers, he spent his childhood in the city of Bône, now Annaba. Since 1956 he has lived in Nice, where he studied and obtained a master's degree in philosophy. He moved to Paris in 1973, always maintaining a laboratory in the south of France. He exhibited at the Daniel Templon Gallery from 1974 to 1985, then at the Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand Gallery from 1990 to 1997. From 1997 to 1999 he painted the fresco of the Palace of Justice in Grasse. After 1990 and his marriage to Marie Seznec, he made regular visits to Spain and Italy.
At the beginning of his activity he was linked to the School of Nice: he participated in some exhibitions and a painting by him was exhibited at the inauguration of the Center Pompidou in 1977, on the occasion of the exhibition "À propos de Nice". While never hiding his admiration for the work of Martial Raysse, César or for some of Arman's works (he was also assistant to the latter two), he declared in a book dedicated to the School of Nice that he felt rather "alien or at least marginal compared to to this whole story."
This distance was confirmed from the early 1990s when he spent long and frequent days in Catalonia, before finally settling after the death of his wife Marie in the hills of Italian-speaking Switzerland, although he often returns for short stays to his studio in St Paul de Vence "Clos Marie" which still binds him to many beautiful memories today.
Although he has long maintained a studio in Paris, he has often lived and worked in southern Europe, as evidenced by the works exhibited in his exhibition "Cinc Estacions" (2007).
Two passages from the book published in 2007 for his exhibition "Cinc Estacions" describe his approach:
«Painting, here, returns to being a principle of interpellation and protest. Tired of interpreting the world, she too begins to dream of transforming it. Since we were told of his death! Ever since Cézanne was the first to say: "It was David, that is, virtue, who killed painting!" Martinez is not a virtuous man, he is an artist. And this is why he is one of those who, before our eyes, are about to deny the new owls of Minerva which, after the end of history, after the end of philosophy, prophesy the end of painting." — Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jacques Martinez : Five seasons
«As if every painting had to be a test, like those that were once called 'masterpieces', to demonstrate an experience acquired throughout the history of painting, ancient, modern and exactly contemporary, to the point of going beyond this history, from moment that Five Seasons (the title of the exhibition) immediately places the work in an excess of time.» — Catherine Millet, Jacques Martinez : Five seasons
Criticizing his 2012 book Espagnol de merde ou la vrai et longue histoire des Cinq Saisons, Philippe Trétiack wrote in Elle: «What a beautiful book! One of those that makes your life more beautiful and makes you a little smarter."
We can also quote Jacques Henric on Art Press: «The success of the book (...) has to do with the way in which Jacques Martinez makes us understand the depth of his biography which nourished his pictorial work for three years ».
The exhibition will be open to the public every Sunday during the public opening of Villa Arconati.
Free entry, upon purchase of the entrance ticket to Villa Arconati.
Opening hours to the public:
Sunday 11am - 7pm