Passariano of Codroipo (Ud), 14 Oct. (askanews) – As many as 130 masterpieces by around fifty great artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and coming from 42 European and American museums. A unique exhibition, with an international scope and set up in the restored spaces of the Eastern Exedra of the magnificent doge complex of Villa Manin in Passariano di Codroipo, in the province of Udine.
Borders from Gauguin to Hopper. I sing with variationsthe exhibition at Villa Marin, Udine
AND Borders from Gauguin to Hopper. I sing with variationsthe highly anticipated exhibition which opened to the public on October 11th and will remain open until April 12th 2026: it is one of the flagship events of GO! 2025&Friends, the program of events that supports the official program of GO! 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia European Capital of Culture, offering cultural proposals throughout the regional territory. Promoted by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and the Regional Body for Cultural Heritage – ERPAC FVG, the exhibition was conceived and curated by Marco Goldin, with the organization of ERPAC FVG itself and Linea d’ombra.
In what could fully be defined as the “ideal museum” of international art of the last two centuries, visitors are accompanied on an exciting journey of wonders and then involved in a visual pleasure that goes hand in hand with the involvement and reflection around a theme of eternal relevance, that of “borders”: physical, geographical, cultural, one’s own intimate borders, the here and the elsewhere, the here that is made elsewhere, border as limit and as point of departure.
From Kiefer to Rothko, from Monet to Van Gogh: many masterpieces on display
The exhibition starts from an introductory room, which already outlines its contents: some masterpieces, even large ones, such as the works of Anselm Kiefer and Mark Rothko, where the border becomes, albeit differently between the two, pervasive, establishing lines that are horizons. And again the very famous “Wave” by Gustave Courbet, movement towards the immense. To then go to Monet who, with “The Church of Varengeville”, proposes spaces on the sea of which the end is not in sight. Finally, a Provençal Cezanne, that sort of domestic elsewhere that seeks boundaries not only in tropical islands in the manner of Gauguin.
The inner border: the self-portrait, from Degas to Modigliani
The first chapter of the exhibition is reserved for the inner boundary, the look inside oneself, the self-portrait. The sequence is breathtaking: Munch, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Hodler, Kirchner Then the gallery of splendid portraits: Courbet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Modigliani, Bacon, Giacometti, in the search for an everyday boundary in the faces, even with all the twentieth-century “burns”.
The subsequent rooms (the second, fundamental area) are dedicated to the relationship between man and nature, figures and space especially in great American painting between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are many works that arrive in Italy and Europe for the first time, from the protagonists of the “Hudson River School” to the key figure of Homer at the turn of the two centuries, and then in the twentieth century especially Hopper and Diebenkorn, two artists who made American painting a treasure chest of wonders. Finally, Andrew Wyeth’s fantastic modulations. To then return to Europe with the interpretation of the relationship between figures and nature in great masters such as Segantini, Becklin and Matisse.
In search of paradise lost
“In search of Paradise Lost” could be indicated as the theme of the third, large section. Exotic or closer Edens, expressed in universal works, milestones in the history of art, from Gauguin to Monet, from Van Gogh to Cezanne and Bonnard.
When the search for boundaries does not lead artists towards the dimension of the distant, it happens that those boundaries push themselves to become closeness, confidence of otherwise distant images. The fourth section is dedicated to this, where around forty extraordinary Japanese woodcuts, collected in two successive sequences (so as not to expose those precious sheets to the light for too long), are present. They come from a single private collection, with the major names of ukiyo-e, from Utamaro to Eisen, from Hokusai to Hiroshige.
Monet and Van Gogh owned many hundreds of those woodcuts. Art, and French art first and foremost, was largely affected. The border stretched beyond the oceans and reached those who had the right spirit to welcome that enchanted world.
From Cezanne’s sacred mountain to Munch’s painted sky
It is impossible to summarize what awaits visitors in the fifth section, which occupies the entire ground floor of the Exedra, with almost 60 works that lead towards the different boundaries included in the natural elements: mountains, seas, skies and finally the Universe. Together with artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, the immense German romantic, a forerunner among other things of the atmospheres of nineteenth-century American painting, of Cole, Bierstadt and Gifford.
At this point, Cezanne’s Sacred Mountain, the Sainte-Victoire, bursts in, flanked by Segantini’s Swiss Alps, uniting the image of peaks with the eternal nature. And the sea, a border to travel and cross: William Turner and Gustave Courbet, then Monet. And again, Bonnard, Nolde, De Stael, here in a breathtaking sequence in the sign of the orange sunset. The sky, above all, when interpreted by Friedrich, Turner, Constable, Boudin, finally leading to the impressionist skies of Monet, Sisley, Pissarro. The transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is marked by the skies painted by Munch, and also Monet, Piet Mondrian, Edward Hopper, Emil Nolde. An entire room is reserved for Monet’s water lilies, in which the Normandy sky is reflected in the Giverny pond. While comes the transition towards the flat skies of De Stael above the Seine in Paris, to rise to the interior skies of an immense painter like Mark Rothko.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED