Alice Neel, Uptown at Victoria Moro Gallery + Venice Biennale Honors Women who Direct

Mother and Child by Alice Neel (1938) - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) Victoria Miro, "a grande dame on the Britart scene" recently expanded her domain to include an outpost here in Venice when she took over Il Capricorno Galleria close to Teatro La Fenice. Founded by her friend and fellow grande dame Bruna Aickelin in 1971, an impressive number of heavyweights like Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenburg and Cy Twombly have been mounted on the walls of the Capricorno over the years.

Hilton Als at Victoria Moro Gallery Venice - Photo: Cat Bauer

Before the Redentore fireworks on Saturday, Pulitzer Prize winning critic and author Hilton Als was here in Venice to present a new chapter of Alice Neel, Uptown, which he curated especially for the Venice gallery. Hilton Als fell in love with Alice Neel when he was fourteen-years-old, and went on his own from Brooklyn into Manhattan to see her show at the Whitney.

Childbirth by Alice Neel (1939) Photo: Cat Bauer

In 1938, Alice Neel (1900-1984) moved from Greenwich Village to Spanish Harlem in pursuit of "the truth," and painted friends, neighbors and people on the street as well as cultural figures connected to Harlem or to the civil rights movement. Als writes: "what fascinated her was the breath of humanity that she encountered."

Alice Neel, Uptown is at Victoria Miro Venice, Il Capricorno from July 15 to September 16.

Meanwhile, also on Saturday, over in the Portego of Ca' Giustinian, headquarters of the Venice Biennale, Antonio Latella, the new Director of Biennale Theatre dove into the archives and mounted an exhibition called Registe alla Biennale, or Women Directors at the Biennale, dedicated to the female directors who have left their imprint on Biennale over the years.

Latella says, "Today, we are often unexpectedly thrilled by dramaturgical or aesthetic shifts that our memory has already erased, while it is not uncommon that everything we see has been masterfully told before, as the history of the Biennale Teatro never ceases to remind us."

The 45th La Biennale International Theatre Festival directed by Antonio Latella runs from July 25 to August 12, 2017, and has a fascinating focus: Latella has invited only women directors.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog