Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice
Sale Dom Pérignon
Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Valeria Loddo
To mark Gianmaria Potenza’s 90th birthday, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art presents Gianmaria Potenza. Io, Venezia. Forma, Luce, Materia, an exhibition dedicated to the Venetian artist and organised in collaboration with Fondazione Potenza Tamini.
The exhibition brings together around thirty works spanning different periods of the artist’s career, with a particular focus on his work from the early 1990s onwards, a period of full artistic maturity and profound renewal in his visual language. Mosaics and bronze sculptures are shown alongside works in wood, handmade paper, polystyrene, canvas and textiles, reflecting the breadth of a practice characterised by continuous experimentation with techniques and materials. Alongside earlier works, three new bronze sculptures – Vela 1, Vela 2 and Astrolabio 2 – created especially for the exhibition, are presented for the first time.
Io, Venezia offers an interpretation of Potenza’s work through his deep-rooted relationship with the city where he was born and has always lived and worked. Venice emerges as the poetic, visual and sensory matrix of his practice: sunsets over the lagoon and its horizons, light, water, architecture and materials are all part of an everyday experience gradually internalised over time, which continues to shape his artistic imagination even when the city is not directly represented in his work.
Form, Light and Matter are the three key themes through which the exhibition explores this relationship. The geometric structures that characterise the artist’s mature visual language, the shimmering surfaces of his mosaics, the interplay of light and shadow in his handmade paper works, the reflections of polished bronze and the intensity of colour evoke a visual world in which the experience of Venice is absorbed and transformed into a distinctive and immediately recognisable artistic language.
The exhibition opens with Venezia in Azzurro and Venezia in Verde, two major works from 1987, rarely shown in public and on loan from a private collection in Austria. With their still recognisable references to Venetian architecture, the two works capture a pivotal moment in Potenza’s career, as his imagery began to move towards the formal synthesis that would become a defining feature of his later work. From there, the exhibition traces the development of his practice as geometry, light and matter become increasingly central to his visual language, culminating in his most recent work and three new sculptures created in 2026.
The exhibition invites visitors to view Gianmaria Potenza’s work through the lens of Venice, recognising the city as the environment that shaped his way of seeing. This perspective offers a way into his creative world, revealing the source of a visionary force that has remained constant throughout more than seventy years of experimentation across different techniques, materials and subjects.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art
Sale Dom Pérignon
Santa Croce 2076,
30135 Venice
3 October – 22 November 2026
The exhibition can be visited during the Museum’s regular opening hours and is included in the Museum admission ticket.
PRESS INFORMATION
CASADOROFUNGHER Comunicazione
Elena Casadoro Kopp | elena@casadorofungher.com | +39 3348 602 488
Chiara Carraro | chiara@casadorofungher.com | +39 3278 945 115
