Within the spaces of the Giorgio Morandi’s Library at ACP – Palazzo Franchetti, the Fondazione Calarota presents the exhibition Jacques Cordier – Venise, dedicated to the final phase of the French artist’s pictori-al research, carried out shortly before his premature death. The exhibition, whose curatorial project is entrusted to Marie-Isabelle Pinet, focuses on a crucial moment in Cordier’s career, when his direct confronta-tion with the work of William Turner — that he had the chance to admire in 1971 during a visit to the Tate Gallery in London — deeply transformed his painting. The study of Turner’s treatment of light marked the beginning of a new phase in the artist’s production, characterized by an increasingly fluid, luminous, and poetic painting, which found a privileged context of expression in the evocative atmosphere of Venice, a city he visited frequently.
With this exhibition, the Fondazione Calarota continues its research on artists who have established a meaningful dialogue with the lagoon city. The show fits coherently within this line and offers a further view on Venice, interpreted by an artist who sought to capture not so much its form as its impression: the movement of air and water, and the energy of the landscape.
Jacques Cordier (Bois-Colombes, 1937 – Lyon, 1975) was trained observing the nineteenth-century landscape tradition. He began his artistic career with drawing, for which he showed a natural inclination from a young age, and in his early works in Indian ink he mainly depicted views of Paris and its surroundings, as well as landscapes of Normandy and Brittany.
During the 1960s, however, his painting gradually opened up to color: an increasingly evident chromatic sensibility emerged, heightened by his installation to Saint-Tropez with his wife Simone, and by the influence of the light of the Var region and the Mediterranean. A decisive turning point came in 1971, when Jacques Cordier and Simone visited the Tate Gallery during a stay in London. The direct confrontation with the work of William Turner (1775–1851), a pioneer of en plein air painting and tireless student of light, brought a profound change in the artist’s creative process.
It is precisely on this phase that the exhibition focuses, presenting primarily oil paintings on canvas that bear witness to a progressive dissolution of form into light: the subjects, while remaining recognizable, dissolve into chromatic vibrations in which water, sky, and architecture merge. From the couple’s annual stays in Venice between 1971 and 1975 emerged a series of works in which the misty light of the lagoon becomes the absolute protagonist. Beyond representation, what remains is impression: the wind swirling through the atmosphere and the ceaseless movement of the water.
Jacques Cordier was fully aware of the artistic legacy he engaged with when painting Venice, a city that had inspired artists such as Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. His compositions pay homage to these illustrious predecessors and, in works such as Près du Harry’s Bar, they position themselves ideally within the artistic and literary circles that contributed to shaping the city’s modern imaginary.