STUTTGART.- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) was celebrated by his contemporaries as “the best painter of Venice”. Born in Venice, he became one of the most important artists of the eighteenth century – as sought-after in Italy as he was in Würzburg or Madrid. To mark the 250th anniversary of his death, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart put together a major exhibition which showcases the museum’s first-rate holdings of the artist in the wider context of outstanding works drawn from public and private collections in Europe and overseas. The exhibition is the first in the German-speaking world to focus on Tiepolo’s career in its entirety and to shed light on the diversity of his oeuvre – from elegant paintings with mythological or historical subjects to dramatic religious pictures as well as caricatures, drawings and etchings.

As a modern response to Tiepolo, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart presents works by Christoph Brech, whose multimedia pieces, among them a video created especially for the exhibition, are the result of the artist’s dialogic engagement with the works of the Venetian master.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue. Available at the museum shop for 29,90 €.

Accompanying the exhibition, the Graphik Kabinett is presenting the show La Serenissima. Italian Drawings from the 16th to the 18th Century.

Venice specialties on paper
Venice holds a prominent position on the map of Italy's artistic landscapes. Brought about by the omnipresent reflecting water surfaces, the unusual light in the »Floating City« inspired not only Venetian painters but also and above all draughtsmen. The stroke of ink, often executed with a pen, takes a leading role: playfully scattered dots and little hook-shaped dabs of a spirited, vibrant, dance-like buoyancy were employed along with washes to reproduce the shimmering effects of the unique atmosphere of »La Serenissima« (»The Most Serene«, as Venice was affectionately called). Compositions sparing in their use of drawing materials and confident in their feeling for expansive surfaces were the result.

Before, during, and after Tiepolo
Featuring some fifty drawings by more than twenty artists - among them Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594), Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), Sebstiano Ricci (1659-1734), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754) and Giuseppe Bernardino Bison (1762-1844) - the exhibition presents the various facets of Venetian draughtsmanship from the sixteenth century to the fall of the Republic of Venice in the eighteenth.

The show enhances the concurrent major special exhibition "Tiepolo". Apart from shedding light on Tiepolo's development and his status among the artists of Venice, it also provides insights into the distinguished collection of Venetian drawings in the holdings of the Staatsgalerie's Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs.