VENICE.- In June 2013, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice initiated the conservation study of ten (10) paintings dating from 1942 to 1947 by American painter Jackson Pollock. The works were acquired directly by Peggy Guggenheim through her representation of the artist at her New York museum/gallery, Art of This Century, during the 1940s. Seen together, the ten pictures demonstrate a pivotal moment in the artist’s oeuvre as his work evolved from a relatively traditional, abstract figurative language to his signature method of pouring, splattering, and dripping paint onto a horizontal picture plane.

The technical research on these ten works revealed information, through non-invasive scientific analysis, that identified pigments, paint chemistry, and changes in composition. This scientific investigation will enhance the understanding of Pollock’s pictorial technique. Initial findings of the scientific study of Pollock’s paintings were presented on October 10, 2013 at the symposium “Science and Innovation in the Study of Modern and Contemporary Art,” organized jointly by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the U.S. Academy of Sciences at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New York.

For the next significant phase of the project, the team has chosen Alchemy, one of Pollock’s most celebrated paintings—dating from 1947 and among the first all-over abstractions executed in his Long Island studio—to receive a complete analytical study and treatment at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. This work will commence in December 2013 when Alchemy arrives in the conservation lab where the team will have access to the Opificio’s analytical equipment and renowned expertise. There, additional analysis and testing will be done prior to embarking on a meticulous surface cleaning of the painting’s complex topography. Alchemy’s surface is built up of multiple layers of enamel, alkyd, and oil paint, which feature high impasto, skeins of paint, splatters and drips, in addition to a complex combination of materials, such as painted twine, sand, and pebbles embedded in the paint. The proposed cleaning is essential to remove the considerable build-up of dirt and grime that has occurred over the years, which has compromised the painting’s aesthetic quality. The surface grime obscures the bold colors and diminishes the essential three-dimensional space that Pollock achieved through his radical methods.

This historic Pollock project, the first ever undertaken in Italy, is being conducted by a distinguished team of scientists coordinated by the conservation departments of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The collaborative team includes the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, MOLAB (Istituto CNR di Science e Tecnologie Molecolari and del Centro di Eccellenza SMAArt, Perugia), the Istituto CNR Nazionale di Ottica di Firenze and the Laboratorio di Diagnostica di Spoleto. The project will also include collaboration with scientists, conservators, and curators in the United States who previously have undertaken considerable research on Pollock’s techniques. The treatment will be carried out by Luciano Pensabene Buemi, conservator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, together with Carol Stringari, Chief Conservator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Italy’s première conservation laboratory for works of fine art. In a splendid example of the traditional and modern worlds of conservation and scholarship coming together, the Opificio will host Alchemy at the same time as work is being carried out on another icon of art history, Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished Adoration of the Magi, (1481), commissioned by the Augustine monks of San Donato a Scopeto and since 1670 belonging to the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.