Hammershøi and his perfect silences

Suspension and silence characterize the painting of Wilhelm Hammershøi, the most important Danish painter of his time.

Produced by Dario Cinorelli publisher and promoted by Fondazione Caliparo in collaboration with the Municipality of Rovigo and Accademia dei Concordi with the support of Intesa San Paolo and under the patronage of the Embassy of Denmark in Italy until June 29th in Rovigo, Palazzo Roverella.

Curated by Paolo Bolpagni, the exhibition, featuring 100 paintings perfectly arranged in an exhibition path aimed at unraveling the era and works, immediately manages to capture its intellectual manifesto and the poetics of silence.

Silence and deserted spaces, almost depicted to reveal in subtraction deep solitudes that inevitably wink at emotional evasion, the authentic one, without discounts. And it is precisely in this aseptic mood that Vilhelm Hammersshøi plays his most important match, the one that decides his unique style and his famous identity.

The painting of the Danish artist, docile, intimate, and restless, reaches its emotional peak in the interiors, with furnishings that are free from frills and essential spaces devoid of any embellishments, but also with the splendid female figures portrayed from behind, including Ida Ilsted, the artist’s wife and muse, who becomes iconic in her unusual portrait. It questions our fantasies intent on imagining what should be seen in a canonical representation, dragging emotions and questions beyond metaphor.

The subtle painterly thread between Hammershøi and the current of artists contemporary to him from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia allows us to grasp the difference of the Danish genius, intent on his own to create a real condition in each of his works, even through a painting attentive to describing and distancing any dissuasive element. Almost as if wanting to give by shading the unnecessary.

And perhaps it is the perfect expectation, combined with the usual silence, that wants to envelop Hammershøi’s painting in that precious melancholy always careful to be present and protagonist. Egocentric but never invasive, always ready to make room, as if it were an artistic bon ton that today we can appreciate in all its proud entirety.

Foto crediti a StudioEsseci

Instacult by Mauro Lama