Carlo Scarpa and the Biennale. In Possagno a link that must be rediscovered through the artists of the Gemin collection, from Klimt to Paul Klee – Treviso

Treviso – For almost forty years, from 1934 to 1972, Carlo Scarpa worked together with the Biennale of Venice, with dozens of installations and architectural interventions, from the access office to the gardens, from the courtyard-Tear to the Mezanine in the Italian Pavilion, Pavilion and that of Venezua.
An exhibition, compiled by Mario Gemin and Orietta Lanzarini, documents how fundamentally this partnership has been in his professional history, to the point to orientate the design and artistic research of the famous Venetian architect and designer. The appointment at the exhibition Carlo Scarpa and the Arts at the Biennale Works and Glass from the Gemin Collection From 22 June 2025 to 11 January 2026 at the gypsotheca museum antonio canova in Possagno (Treviso), where the link between one of the most authoritative figures of the architecture and the setting up of the twentieth century and the venice bintale bintale bintale bintale bintaling Sculptures of Illustrious Artists, from Gustav Klimmt to Paul Klee, by Alberto Giario and Giorgio Morandi to Arturo Martini.
There will be around twenty glasses made by Scarpa for Cappellin and Venini in addition to some of his signed drawings, not published so far, and three sculptures. All works shown come from the collection of the Treviso architect Luciano Gemin, a student, friend and employee of Scarpa.

Paul Klee, Angelo, 1937, pen and watercolor on paper, 19.5 x 26 cm | Photo: © Lino Zanesco

The travel schedule of the exhibition is divided into three sections that have cultivated the great passion for art as a normal thread by Carlo Scarpa, especially in the context of the Biennale.
The first stop reconstructs a kind of “cultural geography” of the references used by the architect within his design and artistic research, such as theAngelo By Paul Klee from 1937, LO Portrait study by Gustav Klimt (drawing on paper) from 1900, Angelo Ribelle by Osvaldo Licini from 1950, Landscape By Giorgio Morandi from 1962.

Il Portrait of Peggy Guggenheim By Alberto Giacometti, the American collector portrays the architect a masterful setting on the XXIV Biennale from 1948, while the Portrait of Olgivanna Wright By Mario de Luigi, wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Scarpa meeting with the American architect in Venice remembers.
If about twenty glass tells the exceptional experience in the second part, Scarpa lived in Murano, for the first time together with the M.VM. Cappellin (1926-31), then with the company of Paolo Venini, deepens the third phase a specific chapter of the relationship between the architect and the Biennial. There will be signature drawings, so far not published, to testify to the design effort he made in 1968 to broaden the exhibition spaces of the Italian pavilion.

Carlo Scarpa, Phoenician Decoration, MVM Cappellin & C. Murano, 1928-1929 | Photo: © Lino Zanesco

The exhibition also offers the starting point to remember the figure of Luciano Gemin whose story is linked to the history of the Gypsotheca Museum Antonio Canova, but also to that of Carlo Scarpa, known during the years of training at the IUAV in Venetia. The friendship between the two, flourished from the first half of the 1960s, became a working relationship that lasted until the Master’s disappearance, as evidenced by the commitment of Gemin, in 1978, to develop and perform the latest project with a shoe for Banca Popolare Di Gemona. From this work, Luciano Gemin attracted inspiration for the construction of the homonymous wing, extension of the museum adjacent to the wing created by Scarpa between 1955 and 1957, now the seat of temporary exhibitions.