Istituto di Storia dell'Arte


Director
Luca Massimo Barbero


Secretarial office
tel. +39 041 2710230
fax. +39 041 5205842
e-mail arte@cini.it


Digital photo library
tel. +39 041 2710440/ +39 041 2710441
fax +39 041 5205842
e-mail fototeca.digitale@cini.it


Cardazzo collection
tel. + 39 041 2710270
fax + 39 041 5210642
e-mail fondo.cardazzo@cini.it


Access to the Archives.
Consultation may be made by appointment.


 

The Istituto di Storia dell'Arte holds a considerable number of documentary and photographic archives linked, in particular, to important figures in the history of art, such as Giuseppe Fiocco and Rodolfo Pallucchini, directors of the institute from 1954 to 1971 and from 1972 to 1989, who entrusted the Foundation with the task of conserving their own materials. Other archives, currently being reordered, hold the testimony of research activities carried out by the Istituto di Storia dell'Arte, which since its foundation in 1954 has coordinated the publication of wide-ranging studies and organised meetings, conferences and exhibitions on ancient and modern art. The institute's archives have also expanded into the field of contemporary art with the deposit of the Cardazzo Collection.
The documentary material includes papers, correspondence relating to exhibitions and publications, requests for expertise and handwritten and typed notes. Important and rich collections of photographs, taken from the end of the nineteenth century until now, are associated with these materials. They document the art works held in public and private collections in Italy and abroad, and are kept in the Photo Library.
The Institute's scientific research and cataloguing have given rise, finally, to the constitution of a series of photographic Atlases, genuine catalogues of photos and art works that can be consulted online.

Fondi fotografici

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History has a very rich photo library comprising around 730,000 photographs, available for consultation by scholars. Some of the photos are mounted on cards and can be viewed in special designed flat file drawers in the historical section of the Photo Library. The rest are divided into thirty collections kept in the former monks' cells in the Nuova Manica Lunga. The collections include the personal photo libraries of eminent art historians, such as Giuseppe Fiocco (1884-1971) and Rodolfo Pallucchini (1908-1989), both former directors of the Institute of Art History, Raimond van Marle (1887-1936), Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà (1888-1961), Nicola Ivanoff (1901-1977), and Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), whose collection was donated by the Villa I Tatti, Florence. There are also collections assembled by photographers specialised in reproducing works of art, such as Nicolò Cipriani and the Greek Pericles Papachatzidakis. Many photos can already be accessed by using the online catalogue, constantly updated and enhanced, also with digital images from the most recent photographic campaigns conducted by the Institute of Art History.

Atlanti

The Atlases contain subjects focused on by specific projects and research activities carried out by the Institute of Art History. They consist of catalogues and photographic collections that can be consulted online. The images attached to the entries come from the Istituto di Storia dell'Arte photographic collection and the archives of other institutions on the basis of agreements made for each project.

Fondo Cardazzo

Carlo Cardazzo (Venice, 1908 - Pavia 1963), enterprising collector, patron, publisher and gallery owner, was a central figure in the Italian and international cultural panorama of the twentieth century. In 1934 he founded the Edizioni del Cavallino in Venice and in 1942 opened the gallery of the same name on the Riva degli Schiavoni, with which he began the intensive exhibiting work related to the masters of the twentieth century. The interior of the gallery was designed by Carlo Scarpa, who also designed Cardazzo's new premises in the Frezzeria (1949) and the Book Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale in 1950 as an exhibition area dedicated to the art book. In 1946 Cardazzo opened the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan and in 1955 the Galleria Selecta in Rome, with which he expanded his relations in the main centres of the art system of those years. The first supporter of Spatialism and attentive promoter of research in the Informal area with exhibitions on artists like Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Emilio Scanavino, Carlo Cardazzo was a pioneer in opening exchanges with the international art world. Thanks to innovative cultural strategies and an extensive network of relations, he organised exhibitions on numerous leaders of international art - from the first Pollock exhibition in Europe in a private space, to those of Matta, Jorn, Mathieu, Brauner and Dubuffet - and supported Italian artists abroad, establishing an important dialogue particularly with American collecting.

The Cardazzo collection exhaustively documents the work of the Gallery and the Edizioni del Cavallino from their foundation until the 2000s, along with the cultural strategies of Carlo Cardazzo first and then of his son Paolo. Paolo Cardazzo (Venice, 1936-2011) directed the Cavallino from 1966 with his sister Gabriella, taking over from their uncle Renato Cardazzo, who had looked after the business since 1963. Attentive to the new forms of artistic expression, he launched a pioneering programme of promoting video art in the 1970s, making the Galleria del Cavallino one of the most important production centres in Italy.
The collection contains correspondence, work notes, notes, typed sheets, photographic prints and negatives, through which it is possible to reread the genesis of the Cavallino exhibiting and publishing projects from the 1930s to 2010. A documentary core concerns the start of Carlo Cardazzo's collection, which in the 1930s and 1940s was one of the most important private collections in Italy. It featured masters like Campigli, Carrà, de Pisis, Modigliani, Marini and Martini, among others. It also contains a complete collection of the catalogues of exhibitions held in the galleries set up by Carlo Cardazzo (Cavallino, Naviglio and Selecta), either originals or digital copies, and a large collection of books published by Cavallino and a body of drawings made for the Cavallino by artists such as Bacci, Bill, Campigli, Capogrossi, Carrà, Guidi, Morandis, Morellet, Pozzati, Reggiani, Saetti, Šutej and Tomea.
It also contains the collection of photos and technical sheets on the works of Bruno Saetti, which came together in the publication of the three volume general catalogue of the artist, promoted by the Galleria del Cavallino and the Associazione Bruno Saetti.
The collection was ceded to the Fondazione Giorgio Cini's Istituto di Storia dell'arte with a loan for use agreement by Paolo Cardazzo's daughters, Angelica and Barbara Cardazzo, at the beginning of 2016. The Cardazzo heirs also donated a body of artist's drawings, a collection of books, catalogues and illustrated postcards published by Cavallino and a collection of posters for exhibitions held by the Venetian gallery to the Fondazione.
The collection has been ordered into ten inventory series: the Carlo Cardazzo and Galleria del Cavallino collection, Edizioni del Cavallino, the Exhibition catalogue collection, the Book Pavilion, Videoarte, Press releases, Administrative documents, Photos, the Bruno Saetti Catalogue and Various documents. The current ordering reflects that with which the materials were kept in the gallery and publisher's archive, which between the 1990s and the start of the 2000s was reordered by Paolo Cardazzo.

Essential bibliography

A. Fantoni, Il gioco del Paradiso. La collezione Cardazzo e gli inizi della Galleria del Cavallino, preface by G. Vigorelli, introduction by D. Marangon, Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice 1996.
D. Assante, F. Bertan, Carlo Scarpa. Il Padiglione del Libro alla Biennale di Venezia. La Galleria del Cavallino 1942 e 1949, preface by P. Cardazzo, Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice 2000.
D. Marangon, Videotapes del Cavallino, introduction by V. Fagone, Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice 2004.
G. Bianchi, Un cavallino come logo. Storia delle edizioni del Cavallino, preface by D. Marangon, Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice 2006.
A. Cardazzo (ed.), Caro Cardazzo... Lettere di artisti, scrittori e critici a Carlo Cardazzo dal 1933 al 1952, Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice 2008.
L.M. Barbero (ed.), Carlo Cardazzo. Una nuova visione dell'arte, exhibition catalogue (Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, 1 November 2008 - 9 February 2009), Electa, Milan 2008.

 

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