“Homo Faber: Crafting a more human future”, the first great exhibition on European craft excellence, is an unmissable appointment, organised by Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, in collaboration with Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte, La Triennale di Milano, Fondation Bettencourt Schueller, and Fondazione Giorgio Cini. For the first time, top European art Masters are coming together on a single great stage: the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the San Giorgio Maggiore island in Venice, where 4000sqm are being dedicated to today's craftsmanship, art and applied arts. The event, also supported by the Michelangelo Foundation, focuses on promoting and enhancing Metiers d'Art, with an aim to revive a full-blown Renaissance of European applied arts.
Within this extraordinary context, Best of Europe is the room showcasing the “best” of art masters' current production, thanks to the accurate, wide-ranging selection carried out by the Italian-Belgian curator Jean Blanchaert, an important Milan-based gallerist and a great expert of applied arts, in collaboration with architect Stefano Boeri, who has envisaged a dreamlike, poetic canal being crossed over by 300 and more selected objects, created by 150 masters from all over Europe. The curator picked out his chosen art objects after spending several months in search of “well-made beauty”, never overlooking any of the European countries dedicated to crafts business, thus collecting a number of works featuring a high level of creative and operational craftsmanship from extremely different traditions and places, testifying to the rich, manifold creativity of this world.
“In Europe, every 50 kilometres we find different accents, wine and food. Craftwork techniques and traditions vary in the same way”, Blanchaert asserts. Beside admiring precious handmade products in a great many styles and materials, visitors will be able to plunge into an actual “life in the atelier” experience, where they can watch up to thirty-six artisans at work showing their unparalleled technique to the public. Multiple fascinating activities will be introduced: the painting technique for bookspines, called “fore edge painting”, the stringed instruments manufacturing, the leather work and artistic bookbinding, gemstone mosaics and micro-mosaics, the lacquer art, embroidery, metal-working and wood-carving, stone, wood and mother-of-pearl engraving, basket weaving, millinery...: an actual gallery of excellence artisans at work for the public's enjoyment and admiration.
An emotional place, a unique scenario narrating and displaying the history of artisanal Europe, where culture, landscapes, skills and resources merge together to build the treasure of our continent and nurture outstanding creativity and manual skills.
