ASTONISH, ANTAGONIZE & THRILL

Palazzo Amalteo chooses to settle in Venice as in the subtle, secret and necessary counterweight to the world.

The programing - contemporary art and architecture - is provided by a selection of international curators. Each of these signatures is invited to dare to be bold and to assume one’s biases: immune from effects of consensus.

The ambition is to show the peculiarities of the international creative scene and to offer a fresh perspective on the contemporary data of an exhibition.

Palazzo Amalteo's program draws only on one principle of excellence: at the same time to astonish, antagonize and thrill [surprendre, contrarier et ravir / stupirsi, irritarsi e estasiarsi].

 

ACRONYM

We invite you to consider A.M.A.L.T.E.O. as an acronym :

A = Ars
M = Metafora
A = Alteritas
L = Littera
T = Theorema
E = Exceptio
O = Opus

Our acronym is spellable not only in Latin, but also in other languages :

English : Art  Metaphor  Alterity  Language  Theorem  Exception  Opus
French : Art  Métaphore  Altérité  Langage  Théorème  Exception  Œuvre
Italian : Arte  Metafora  Alterità  Linguaggio  Teorema  Eccezione  Opera
Portuguese : Arte  Metáfora  Alteridade  Linguagem  Teorema  Exceção  Obra
German : Arbeit  Metapher  Anderssein  Literatur  Theorem  Entscheidung  Opus
Spanish : Arte  Metafora  Alteridad  Lengua  Teorema  Excepcio  Obra

Here lies the secret formula of the Palazzo.

 

CHIEF CURATOR

Jean-Michel Ribettes

A life lived simultaneously in the fields of contemporary art, publishing and Freudian psychoanalysis (trained by Dr. Jacques Lacan).

 

International Art Curator (a selection) 

       PS1/MoMA, NY
       Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
       Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
       Shoto Art Museum, Tokyo
       Hiroshima Prefectoral Art Museum
       Shizuoka Prefectoral Museum of Art
       Onomichi City Museum of Art
       Kariya City Art Museum
       Akita Prefectoral Museum of Modern Art
       Herzliya Museum of Art
       Museum Villa Stuck, Munich
       Rotonda della Besana, Milan
       Fondation pour l'architecture, Brussels
       Passage de Retz, Paris
       Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris
       Musée de la Poste, Paris
       American Center, Paris

Publisher & Editor (a selection)

       Bourgois
       Le Seuil
       Navarin
       Desclée de Brouwer
       Denoël
       Gallimard

 

HISTORY

Amalteo is the name of a noble family belonging to Oderzo, Treviso, several members of whom were distinguished in literature, art and science during the Renaissance period.

The best known are three brothers, Geronimo (1507–1574), Giambattista (d. 1573) and Cornelio (1530–1603), whose Latin poems were published in one collection under the title Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina (Venice, 1627; Amst., 1689).

The eldest brother, Geronimo, was a celebrated physician and philosopher teaching at the university of Padua; one of his sons, Octavio, was also a philosopher and a physician teaching at the same university. The second brother, Giambattista, accompanied a Venetian embassy to England in 1554, and was secretary to Pius IV at the Council of Trent. The third, Cornelio, was a physician and secretary to the Republic of Ragusa.

The painter Pomponio Amalteo (1505-1588) - who was Pordenone’s pupil and son-in-law - likely comes from this family ; in 1568, Vasari (Lifes of the Most Excellent Painters…) praised the work of the painter : ‘‘il quale per le sue buone qualità meritò d’esser genero del Pordenone’’.

Geronimo commissioned a Palladian architect to build on the bank of Rio San Stin, in the neighborhood of the Frari Church, his secondary residence, Ca’ Amalteo. With its pediment, marble balusters, Serlian windows, the building completed around 1540 adheres to all the principles of Renaissance architecture : proportion and symmetry, balance and grace. Designed in accordance with the precepts that Palladio introduced into architecture in the 1530s, the Palazzo Amalteo is a paragon of the aesthetics of the Venetian Renaissance.