PALAZZO LOREDAN, VENEZIA
The temporary exhibition “The Last Venice”, set up at Palazzo Loredan at Campo Santo Stefano, in the premises of the Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts Veneto (IVSLA), is the eighth episode of the successful exhibition cycle “Esovisioni” and presents to the public for the first time 69 original prints of the reportage taken in Venice by Gotthard Schuh in 1963. In the lagoon city, another famous reportage by the Swiss photographer, the 1938 one dedicated to Bali, the island of the gods, was exhibited at the same time, but in Palazzo Trevisan of Ulivi. The temporary exhibition boasts 69 original first-run photographs from the Venetian reportage (1963) owned by the Schuh family and the Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur. In the lens of his Leica, a Venice demythologised, but at the same time charged with the profound fascination of its history. A reportage that reminds us in some ways of the Nordic tradition of the ‘Italian Journey’ and overturns the canons of exoticism. Schuh finds a subtle harmony between a mature inner vision, which has gone through the great changes of the 20th century, and a hidden city that he feels deeply and reveals to us, beyond stereotypes.
Gottard Schuh – biographical notes
He was born in Germany, lived in Switzerland, began painting as a teenager and later enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich where his speciality was engraving. He undertook trips to Italy and France, and in Paris he came into contact with avant-garde artists. In 1926, at the age of 29, he began to take an interest in photography. He started producing reportages for the Zürcher Illustrierte. He then collaborated with prestigious illustrated weeklies of international circulation such as ‘Vu’, ‘Paris Match’, ‘Life’ and ‘Berliner Illustrierte’. In 1957 he exhibited at the Venice Photography Biennale, receiving a gold medal for his work; and it was to the lagoon city that he dedicated his last reportage in 1963, collected in the 1965 monograph Tage in Venedig. The exhibition is accompanied by the related catalogue, edited by Paola Costantini, which includes contributions by Nanni Baltzer, Francesco Paolo Campione, Paola Costantini, Antonio Mariotti and Alberto Prandi.
“Esovisioni” is a cycle dedicated to the peculiarities and paths of viewing cultures through the photographic lens. The working hypothesis is that the photographer, taking the exotic image as a pretext has, consciously or unconsciously, returned his own inner vision, fertilising the collective imagination with artful images and stereotypes of different cultural realities.