The Museo di Palazzo Grimani is pleased to present Archinto , an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Georg Baselitz , curated by Mario Codognato and produced by Gagosian in collaboration with Venetian Heritage . Set up on the main floor of the Museum , the exhibition includes twelve canvases specially made by the artist for the Sala del Portego , placed in its original eighteenth-century stucco frames, where up to the 19th century portraits of the Grimani family stood out. Thanks to a very special agreement, these works will remain on long-term loan to the museum by concession of the artist , establishing a continuous dialogue between classical and contemporary art that further enriches the cultural offer of the museum. It is the first time to date that a similar collaboration has taken place between a contemporary artist and a state museum in Venice.

Baselitz 's vigorous and direct approach to artistic creation is well known, while including the art of Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, as well as other historical and artistic traditions, among the key influences in his work. In 1969 he began making inverted images , with the aim of slowing down the processes of creation, observation and understanding.

Over the past fifty years - often reinterpreting and referring to his own body of work - Baselitz has further expanded his visual language with a series of historical and formal allusions , while constantly returning to the human figure as his main subject .

In this exhibition , the artist pays homage to Venice and its rich artistic tradition , on the one hand by re-establishing historical continuity and on the other by signaling a break between celebrated Renaissance portraiture and its contemporary equivalents. The title of the exhibition and its works refer to the enigmatic portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto that Titian painted in 1558 , characterized by a dense brushstroke that confuses the figure with the background. Titles such as Archinto durcheinander (Archinto confuso) (2020) bring the sensitivity of the Old Masters into a current context, while the ghostly quality of the images themselves allude to the constant artistic theme of human mortality.