We are accustomed to identifying the world of art with large and showy institutions: museums, galleries, famous public and private collections.
But we also know that there has been a period in art marked by wholly different characteristics: another world that was dynamic and informal, during which artists made material their social and community experience; during which their works were appreciated and collected in a different way. The Ristorante All’Angelo is the first, famous stop on our journey.
Here the Carrain family lived its entrepreneurial and cultural adventure around the years of the Second World War. But its golden age starts from a particular moment in the very lively artistic debate of the late 1940s with the birth (and the sudden end!) of the movement called Fronte Nuovo delle Arti.
In 1927 the Carrain family took over a working- class trattoria at the end of Calle Larga San Marco, right next door to the Piazza. It managed it with intelligence and dynamism and created that atmosphere of cordiality and participation that would make it famous.
Two circumstances enlivened the present and future history of the restaurant: firstly, Renato Carrain, son of Augusto, the founder, was an able successor to his father and had a singular passion for art: his restaurant spontaneously attracted all the young (and less young) Venetian artists of the moment, including old glories and emerging and exuberant talents. Secondly, Renato Carrain wrote to a far-sighted and shrewd art critic, Giuseppe Marchiori, a native of Rovigo but more or less resident in Venice, to ask him to apply his experience and knowledge to assist him in the management of what had become a sort of incubator of art celebrities.
It was at this point that Peggy Guggenheim stopped by, as though guided by a heavenly messenger, arriving from New York, Paris and London. Peggy would become a frequent visitor to the restaurant, and indeed, almost a sort of ambassador and mascot for it. In these poor and generous post-war years, the attendance of the artists became more and more assiduous and eminent.
The ingredients were now all there and the Angel took flight. Under the skilled management of Marchiori and with Renato Carrain’s passion and know-how, the restaurant’s tables witnessed a dynamic and prominent season in Italian modern art: as we mentioned above, it was here that the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti was founded by Pizzinato, Vedova, Santomaso, Guttuso, Birolli, Turcato, Corpora, Viani, Leoncillo, Franchini, Morlotti and Fazzini.
The best, one might say, of the new generation in the Italy of the recent liberation and of ethical, political, social and, of course, artistic commitment. But, as can be seen from a simple reading of these great names, the group included a number of very different and even opposing artistic currents and aesthetic trends.
In March 1950 the group was dissolved amidst controversy and the creation of new groupings. And where was its death certificate signed? At the Angelo, of course! And the Angelo itself retains the finest and richest traces of this story: the paintings that many of the artists left on its walls.
Legend whispers of payments made “in kind”: a meal for a work of art. This may indeed have been the case, but Renato Carrain, who defined the legend of the poor artist paying in kind a “fola”, a fairy tale, was himself a patron, since he commissioned some of the most important of these works, starting with the three famous and fascinating triptychs by Vedova, Santomaso and Pizzinato dedicated to illustrating the history and arts of Venice in their own way.
L’”Angelo degli Artisti”.
L’arte del Novecento e il ristorante All’Angelo a Venezia.
Dal 07 dicembre 2019 al 01 marzo 2020
Il ristorante All’Angelo, tra Fronte Nuovo delle Arti e Peggy Guggenheim: le avventure delle Avanguardie ai tavoli di Renato e Vittorio Carrain.
Il mondo dell’arte si identifica spesso con musei, gallerie, collezioni pubbliche e private, ma c’è una stagione dell’arte moderna che ha avuto un diverso profilo: un ‘altro mondo’, dinamico e informale, nel quale gli artisti hanno vissuto il loro momento sociale e comunitario, dove le loro opere sono state apprezzate e raccolte. E’ qui che sono nate collezioni insolite, più o meno ricche ed esclusive, spesso entrate a far parte di una tradizione, che hanno segnato una cultura e hanno marcato con inconfondibili caratteri una città e un territorio.
La mostra L’Angelo degli Artisti. L’arte del Novecento e il ristorante All’Angelo a Venezia a cura di Giandomenico Romanelli e Pascaline Vatin negli spazi della Fondazione Querini Stampalia dal 7 dicembre 2019 al 1 marzo 2020, pone l’attenzione su uno di questi ‘luoghi’, su un collezionismo che ha avuto per mecenati ristoratori di rara sensibilità, lungimiranti nelle scelte, capaci di dar vita ad esperienze che hanno scritto un capitolo importante e originale nella scena culturale non solo cittadina.
Un ambiente ideale e accogliente per gli artisti, in cui ritrovarsi, discutere, scambiare opinioni ed esperienze, far progetti, unirsi in gruppi e tendenze, elaborare documenti e programmi, ma anche celebrare successi, festeggiare ricorrenze, prendere atto di divergenze, litigare, consumare rotture. E, naturalmente, mangiare e bere.
La mostra, promossa dalla Fondazione Querini Stampalia in collaborazione con Lineadacqua e Villa Morosini a Polesella, rientra nel programma delle celebrazioni per i 150 anni dalla nascita dell’Istituzione. Esposti dipinti, lettere, testimonianze, fotografie, schizzi, dediche e saluti, menù e ricette. Tutto il mondo della cultura e dell’arte, con i suoi protagonisti, che ruota attorno al ristorante All’Angelo.
Per la realizzazione della mostra è risultata determinante la generosa fondamentale collaborazione di Luciano Zerbinati e della sua collezione, che ha il merito di aver acquistato, salvando dalla dispersione, i materiali dell’Angelo. Irrinunciabili inoltre la documentazione famigliare, i ricordi e l’esperienza messe amichevolmente a disposizione da Renato Carrain.
La mostra costituisce la prima tappa di un progetto che prevede di affrontare e presentare la storia, i protagonisti e le collezioni di alcuni dei principali locali veneziani del ‘900.
