What do the Star Wars
city of Coruscant, the architect Le
Corbusier and the artist Robert
Delaunay have in common? They were
all inspired by the Italian artist
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 –
1778).
On 9 September, the exhibition
‘Piranesi and the Modern’ will open
at Norways National Museum. The
exhibition will present Piranesi’s
most famous works and explore his
significance for art, architecture,
film and photography in our own
times. Works by Piranesi from more
than 250 years ago will be displayed
alongside works by artists such as
Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay and
Julie Mehretu, the architects Le
Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas, and
groundbreaking photographers and
filmmakers such as Alvin Langdon
Coburn and Sergei Eisenstein.
An
inspiration for the Modern
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an
architect, printmaker, archaeologist,
author, publisher and dealer in art
and antiquities. He is most famous
for his etchings depicting Rome,
prison scenes, architectural
fantasies, vertiginous stairways,
and crumbling ruins. His works
contributed to defining the Modern
in various art forms in both the
20th and 21st centuries: abstract
painting; cinematic montage; high
contrast photography; and new ways
of thinking about architecture and
urban planning.
The National Museum has been very
fortunate to be allowed to borrow
the copper printing plates for
Piranesi’s ‘Campo Marzio’ (1762) for
this exhibition. The plates have
never before been exhibited outside
Rome. This is also the first time
that the complete series of
Piranesi’s famous ‘Imaginary Prisons’
(1761) prints has been shown in
Norway. In addition, the exhibition
includes architectural models and
collages by the Dutch architect Rem
Koolhaas (born 1944) that have never
previously been exhibited.
‘Piranesi and the Modern’ also
inaugurates two new exhibition rooms
at the new National Museum. The
rooms are intended for temporary
exhibitions and are located on the
museum’s ground floor. A satellite
exhibition will be displayed in
Hvelvet (‘The Vault’) at the
National Museum – Architecture
during the Oslo Architecture
Triennale (from 23 September). Here,
visitors can experience selected
works from Piranesi’s ‘Imaginary
Prisons’ within a vaulted structure
designed by the architect Christian
Heinrich Grosch (1801–1865) – a
space that bears a striking
similarity to the interiors in
Piranesi’s prison pictures.
|
September 4, 2022 |