AS THE “JEWELLERY BY ARTISTS: FROM PICASSO TO KOONS” EXHIBITION COMES TO A CLOSE, BERNAR VENET DONATES A WORK OF ART TO THE LNMM
08/12/2017
Photo: Agnija Grigule
As the Jewellery by Artists: From Picasso to Koons. Diane Venet’s Collection exhibition organised by Arterritory.com and held in the Cupola Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMM) comes to a close, the French sculptor Bernar Venet has expressed his gratitude at the completion of a successful project by donating to the museum his large-format work of graphic art titled Effondrement: Arcs (2013). This is the first work by Venet in the LNMM’s Collection of Foreign Art.
Māra Lāce, the director of the Latvian National Museum of Art, says: “The museum is delighted to accept this gift. The large-format work is a valuable addition to the LNMM’s collection of graphic art and will remind us of the wonderful collaboration we enjoyed during the Picasso to Koons exhibition.”
Bernar Venet is one of the most vivid personalities in the contemporary art world. He is linked with the art scene both in the United States and Europe. He is most often called a conceptualist and has worked with a great variety of media: painting, installations, drawing, sculpture, stage design, cinema, music composition and even choreography. One of the central elements in his creative work is the line, which is transformed in very many different ways. He is one of the few artists to have had a solo exhibition at the Palace of Versailles, as a part of its series of annual contemporary art projects. For six months in 2011, Venet’s large-format sculptures invited visitors to Versailles to immerse themselves in the relationship between art, landscape and architecture – between art, time and history. In 2016, Venet received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Sculpture Center in New York City for his contributions to the field of contemporary sculpture.
The exhibition Jewellery by Artists: From Picasso to Koons was on show at the LNMM from November 4 to December 3 and included 113 pieces of jewellery created by 82 very well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. It provided a one-of-a-kind opportunity to experience the history of modern art in concentrated form. The exhibition’s visual character was created by the Latvian artist duo MAREUNROL’S.
The exhibition was seen by 13,000 visitors in one month.
Art collector Diane Venet expressed her genuine joy in an e-mail to Arterritory.com: “I am endlessly happy. The team with whom we worked on the installation and the exhibition was fantastic all along. The creativity and the professionalism as this exhibition was organised will remain as an example for the future exhibitions I am curating.”
Diane Venet’s extensive collection of artist-made jewellery is now returning to Paris, where from March 8 until July 1 it will be exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
The exhibition was supported by
, Latvia’s national airline , the centre in Riga, , the French Institute in Latvia, and , with informational support from magazine and the news portal. The exhibition’s cooperation partner was the Latvian National Museum of Art.