Harold Stevenson Opens the Tommaso Calabro Gallery in Venice
Tommaso Calabro has decided to inaugurate his new Venetian space with a startling, subversive, and at times pornographic exhibition. It is signed by Harold Stevenson, who passed away in 2018, a figure of post-war avant-garde culture, intimate friend of Andy Warhol, and famous for painting extra-large male nudes like the renowned “The New Adam” back in 1962. The spacious halls of the beautiful Palazzo Donà Brusa in Campo San Polo will thus serve as a suggestive backdrop to this titillating solo show dominated by male nudes, intertwined bodies, and sex, sometimes explicit and sometimes implied. All of this is narrated through works created between the late 1950s and the 1970s, including the famous nature paintings, the “toreros,” and the glass sculptures. To christen the new gallery, one of the liveliest and most vital parties of the entire season was held. On the makeshift stage in the room housing the centrepiece of the entire exhibition, “The Altar of Peace” (1972), performed the bands of the New Martini and the Spanish singer-songwriter Tonino Carotone. Among the audience, there were many representatives of the art and culture world such as Guglielmo Castelli, Angela Missoni, Bruno Ragazzi, as well as music stars like Manuel Agnelli and Samuel from Subsonica. Together, they celebrated the indissoluble bond that united Stevenson and the city of Venice throughout his life, his great source of inspiration.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photo: Ludovica Arcero
