The project continues the exhibition line of Spazio -1, placing itself after the exhibition dedicated to Giulio Paolini (September 2015) and the thematic review Sulla Croce (March 2016). The Kabakovs and the Avant-Gardes exhibition stems from a personal relationship, born several years ago between artists and collectors, and connects the works of the two great Russian masters with the works of the historical avant-gardes from the Olgiati Collection, thus placing the foundations for a very particular intellectual dialogue. In the exhibition, the works of the Kabakovs are compared with a selection of works from the historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century (Russian suprematism and cube futurism, Italian futurism and European abstractionism). It will therefore be of great visual impact this project wanted by a duo of artists recognized among the most important masters of the world contemporary art scene. Six large paintings, a sculpture and an installation by llya and Emilia Kabakov can be admired alongside great names of the historical avant-gardes. To name a few: Malevich, Kandinsky and Rodtschenko among Russian artists; Balla, Boccioni and Severini among the Italian futurists, Léger and Schwitters representatives of European abstraction and Dadaism. The perimeter space of Spazio -1 will be occupied by the works of the Kabakovs, while the paintings of the historical avant-gardes will find their home on temporary walls placed diagonally in the central part of the exhibition area, and will be arranged to form a grid inhabited in the center by a cross structure , according to a scheme of clear supremacist origin.
The exhibition project, conceived expressly by Ilya Kabakov for Lugano, turns out to be an extraordinary tribute by the artist to the history of art, with which he constantly dialogues, and in particular to the Olgiati Collection, of which he shares particular choices and an overall vision. Paintings that represent the greatest achievements of European abstraction are therefore incorporated in an installation by one of the major protagonists of the contemporary world. Beyond any chronological or genre division, the exhibition activates a temporal short circuit, a great synthesis that tells of art and history, of the great social and cultural systems of the past century and of the supervening fragmentation of the present.
The catalog of The Kobokov and the Avant-Gardes exhibition includes a critical essay by Robert Storr, former Senior Curator of the Painting and Sculpture Department of the MOMA in New York and curator of the 2007 Venice Biennale, together with other in-depth texts, as well as the color reproduction of all the works on display. At the same time as the exhibition dedicated to the Kabakovs, a new staging of the Olgiati Collection with unpublished works is proposed at Spazio -1.