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.


 

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.


 

Modalità di consultazione I documenti conservati nel fondo sono consultabili su appuntamento dietro presentazione di motivata richiesta scritta da inviare all'indirizzo e-mail fondo.cardazzo@cini.it. 

Strumenti di ricerca Il fondo è attualmente in corso di catalogazione informatica. Sono disponibili la descrizione complessiva dei materiali documentari, l'inventario dei fascicoli che riguardano la figura di Carlo Cardazzo e l'attività della Galleria del Cavallino e le digitalizzazioni dei volumi che raccolgono i cataloghi delle mostre. Il fondo è consultabile e ricercabile attraverso la maschera di "Ricerca libera in tutto il patrimonio", la maschera di "Ricerca avanzata" (per titolo del fascicolo e cronologia) e attraverso la "Struttura" archivistica. La ricerca si può limitare alle raccolte dei cataloghi delle mostre selezionando "Cataloghi".

you searched for

advanced search