VENICE.- From 24 March to 23 June 2024, paintings and drawings from Museum Berggruen - Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin are on display in Italy for the first time. More than 40 works by Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Giacometti and Cézanne join those by Giorgione, Sebastiano Ricci, Pietro Longhi, Giambattista Tiepolo and Canova at two venues - the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice and Casa dei Tre Oci for the exhibition Elective Affinities. The latter, located on Venice’s Giudecca, is the new headquarters of the Berggruen Institute Europe, which has recently reopened to the public after a restoration programme.

The exhibition is curated by Giulio Manieri Elia and Michele Tavola, Director and Curator of the Gallerie dell'Accademia of Venice, and Gabriel Montua and Veronika Rudorfer, Head of and Curator of Museum Berggruen in Berlin, one of the most important European state institutes of modern art, named after the Paris-based art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007). In the year 2000, Prussian Cultural Heritage (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz) purchased Heinz Berggruen’s collection for the Nationalgalerie, Germany with funding from the German government and the state of Berlin.

The title of the exhibition, Elective Affinities, was chosen to evoke and underline the potential dialogue that arises from the meeting of these two important collections, from similarities in iconography to subject matter. The title is inspired by the famous novel of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a writer who spent time in Venice during his travels to Italy.

At Gallerie dell'Accademia

17 works from Museum Berggruen have been integrated into Gallerie dell'Accademia’s permanent displays, where visitors are invited to discover two very different collections - some of the greatest Venetian paintings alongside Heinz Berggruen’s collection of modernist masterpieces.

Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar with Green Fingernails is shown alongside Giorgione’s La Vecchia - very different works linked by an intimate relationship between artist and sitter. Two studies by Picasso for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are displayed alongside a series of sketches by Tiepolo. Sculptures by Giacometti and Canova also are in dialogue with each other.

At Casa dei Tre Oci, Giudecca

Casa dei Tre Oci displays works on paper - four works from the collection of Gallerie dell'Accademia and 26 from Museum Berggruen, including those by Klee, Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse. This neo-Gothic palace, designed as a home and studio by the artist Mario de Maria and built in 1913, reopened to the public after major restoration to become the new headquarters of the Berggruen Institute Europe - a place of study and international discussion, hosting exhibitions, workshops and symposiums.

Performance by Miles Greenberg at Palazzo Malipiero

Museum Berggruen – Neue Nationalgalerie will present a new performance work by Miles Greenberg (Canadian, b. 1997) on the occasion of the opening of the 60th Biennale of Contemporary Art. Co-curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Lisa Botti, Greenberg’s durational performance, “Sebastian”, forms a dialogue with the iconography of Saint Sebastian at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, as well as with Venice’s storied blackamoor motifs. This piece, as opposed to a linear narrative, will be presented as an open ritual over the course of eight hours at the historic Palazzo Malipiero.