THE ANTONIO DALLE NOGARE FOUNDATION

From 13 April 2024 to 28 December 2025, the Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation presents the collection’s new exhibition Under the Spell of Duchamp, curated by Eva Brioschi. The title points to the influence of Marcel Duchamp, often defined as a kind of spell under which many artists of the last century produced their works. Duchamp is considered a forerunner of conceptual art, as his desire to free the artist from the yoke of producing works – created with the sole intention of satisfying “retinal vision” – and his desire to desacralise the artistic gesture understood as creative fury, provoked in artists of subsequent generations reflections on the very essence of art making. The idea, the process and the moment of conception thus become more important than the residual object that, as a result, takes shape, or simply “appears”. The key work on show is La Boîte en Valise, around which other recent acquisitions from the Collection revolve.

The title TOUTITÉ represents the most cohesive interpretation of the Russian term vsechestvo and the French toutisme —also rendered in English as Everythingism. According to the curators Brioschi and Marchand toutitè represents “an artistic attitude that refuses to set spatial or temporal boundaries”, “a study of the form of forms”, a transversal, transnational, and transdisciplinary approach, an unrestricted creative principle, open to infinite variations. The exhibition will feature architectural reliefs, design projects in the realm of fashion—where Iliazd collaborated with Sonia Delaunay and Coco Chanel—alongside archival materials from his publishing career and notable artist’s books. Among these are pages from the books LidantYU fAram (1923), Un Soupçon (1965), and Le Frère Mendiant (1959), illustrated by Pablo Picasso, as well as the entire “book-object” Poésie de mots inconnus (1949) – with illustrations by Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, among others. Another section will explore Iliazd’s connection with Duchamp, showcasing previously unseen materials from the Boîte-en-valise, highlighting their professional bond built on mutual admiration. Additionally, a young French artist, Chloé Vanderstraeten, will present a work, that merges sculpture, drawing, and architecture, created in response to these two masters, and engaging in a contemporary dialogue with their legacy.

The title TOUTITÉ represents the most cohesive interpretation of the Russian term vsechestvo and the French toutisme —also rendered in English as Everythingism. According to the curators Brioschi and Marchand toutitè represents “an artistic attitude that refuses to set spatial or temporal boundaries”, “a study of the form of forms”, a transversal, transnational, and transdisciplinary approach, an unrestricted creative principle, open to infinite variations. The exhibition will feature architectural reliefs, design projects in the realm of fashion—where Iliazd collaborated with Sonia Delaunay and Coco Chanel—alongside archival materials from his publishing career and notable artist’s books. Among these are pages from the books LidantYU fAram (1923), Un Soupçon (1965), and Le Frère Mendiant (1959), illustrated by Pablo Picasso, as well as the entire “book-object” Poésie de mots inconnus (1949) – with illustrations by Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, among others. Another section will explore Iliazd’s connection with Duchamp, showcasing previously unseen materials from the Boîte-en-valise, highlighting their professional bond built on mutual admiration. Additionally, a young French artist, Chloé Vanderstraeten, will present a work, that merges sculpture, drawing, and architecture, created in response to these two masters, and engaging in a contemporary dialogue with their legacy.

The title is an ironic reminder that the creation of a work of art requires not only the artist’s effort but also the participation of the viewer, who completes the creative process through perception. In the darkness of a video room, the artist-viewer relationship becomes even more intimate. Like a confessional of the mind, the gaze surrenders to the images, losing spatial and temporal references and welcoming the possibility of multisensory transmission and an unpredictable epiphany. During each inaugural evening, there will be a moment of in depth discussion and interactive reading of the exhibited work, led by the Foundation’s artistic director, Eva Brioschi, in dialogue with the artist and art professionals. The second event of It Takes Two is dedicated to Frank Hesse, an artist, designer, and yoga teacher living in Zurich, and presents a video made in 2006: Florence: From St. Croce to the Institute of Art History. Following the screening, Frank Hesse will be in a conversation with Eva Brioschi and Nasim Weiler, project manager at Stadtkuratorin Hamburg, whose research focuses on conceptual art and performance practices, exploring the themes and processes behind this video work.

In this work, shot with a handheld camera, the artist retraces the path between the Basilica of Santa Croce — where Stendhal experienced the episode later defined as “Stendhal syndrome”—and the Kunsthistorisches Institut, founded in 1897 and supported by Aby Warburg, in Florence. The images, increasingly slowed down, jerky, and blurred, combined with the artist’s breathing and ambient sounds, create a fragmented and unsettling perception. The words scrolling across the screen describe two different approaches to art: one filled with pathos and aesthetic rapture—Stendhal’s—and the other rooted in the rationality of modern art scholarship—Warburg’s. The dissonance between the footage and the text mirrors the tension between Aby Warburg’s theoretical practice and his personal story, marked by psychological disorders. The walk between the two buildings in the city seems like a mental exercise aimed at synthesizing a broader definition of art, where perception, thought, and emotion add up, blending in unpredictable ways.