At the show with the artist: Utagawa Hiroshige’s exhibition in Venice visited by Veronica de Giovannelli

We came across the work of young painter Veronica De Giovanelli during a recent trip to Venice, Italy. She is one of the winners of 2014 Young Artist Prize awarded by Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, a public institution connected to the municipality of Venice that is also hosting a show of her paintings. Her use of the surrounding Venetian landscapes to stress the potentiality of colour made us wonder about the importance of locally sourced inspiration and themes in an increasing monocultural world. In this regard, we challenged her to speak about artistic practices that are far in space and time: the work of ukiyo-e painter Hiroshige on display at Palazzo Grimani, also in Venice. Mostly famous for his landscapes, this Japanese master worked in series following paths through 19th century Japanese scenery like that of his Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō road. De Giovanelli’s composition of small paintings on a single wall of her exhibition took us back to Hiroshige’s series of scenes connected to the landscape, single posts that mark a path with their own specific strength.

What motivated you to visit the show? What did you expect to find?

I have always been attracted by Japanese art and had already enjoyed a Hokusai’s show very much so I was happy to hear the work of Hiroshige would be on display just close to home. Generally I devour exhibitions and I liked this so much that I had to go back a second time to discover details that I had missed. Besides, Palazzo Grimani is a little jewel in the Venetian architecture.

What do you think about the use of colour in Hiroshige? Do you feel it contrasts with the realism of his subjects?

I do. Hiroshige’s way of representing reality and the divergence with what Western artists were making in the same years amazes me. I find his colours extremely contemporary and used in a symbolic manner; they are evocative and simple at the same time; they leave the image in a floating state. Or else they sometimes give me a feeling of childhood, like when only the upper part of the sky is coloured with a stripe of blue which is a trait I often find in children drawings.

Hiroshige’s images are also interesting for anecdotes and other facts about the everyday life of the subjects they depict. Did you see in these pictures any quotidian theme that startled your attention or made you smile?

There is one print titled Shinagawa shiohi no zu (low tide in Shinigawa) from 1855 where a fisherman stumbles while trying to catch a fish with her hands. Her body is partially hidden by another fisherman in the foreground while many other human figures – including strolling children – move in the back creating a very lively composition. I love how in all Hiroshige’s images the characters never stand still: they work, run, talk, interact. It is for a me a beautiful record of common human life as part of a becoming nature.

At the end of the 18th century many artists (most notably Van Gogh) would collect and copy Japanese prints including those of Hiroshige. Do you ever find yourself copying somebody’s else work as an exercise or source of inspiration?

I have never felt the need to directly copy somebody else’s work as an exercise. However I like to think that an artist can be such a good observer and discover the strongest intuitions in someone’s artwork, which unconsciously may end up in their own’s practice too.

The production process of Japanese prints in 19th century consisted of a collaboration between the painter, the carver and the printer who would normally take care of colouring too. What do you think of collective two-dimesional artworks nowadays? Have you ever collaborated with other artists on a canvas?

I have never made a painting with somebody else and my experience with collaboration is limited to how my studio is structured. I work in an open space that hosts a few other artists and I find this dialogue between different ways of making to be a crucial aspect of my research at this stage. A studio communality is like a never-ending nourishment of artistic ideas for me.

What are the exhibitions you are planning to see in the next moths?

There is many but I look forward to seeing Sigmar Polke at London Tate Modern and Camille Henrot at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster. But most of all I would love to go back to Japan and see how other Japanese old masters faced the challenge of painting their landscapes.

November 21, 2022