2026-06-26
Günter Umberg - Elisabeth Vary | Villa Pisani
Villa Pisani Bonetti, Bagnolo di Lonigo26 June - 18 October 2026
Günter Umberg
Elisabeth Vary
Villa Pisani Bonetti, Bagnolo di Lonigo
Opening Friday 26 June 2026
On Friday, June 26, 2026, Villa Pisani Bonetti will inaugurate an exhibition featuring Günter Umberg (Bonn, 1942) and Elisabeth Vary (Cologne, 1940), curated by Francesca Pola, in which works selected to dialogue with this early masterpiece by architect Andrea Palladio will be presented: an extraordinary place that brings its historical identity into dialogue with contemporary creativity, offering visitors a unique experience.
The works of Günter Umberg and Elisabeth Vary are sensitively integrated into the spaces of Palladio’s villa, establishing an evocative dialogue with its historical and architectural richness. The show also aims to enhance the uniqueness of the context, generating a direct comparison between different languages, eras, and visions, creating an intense exhibition itinerary in which the exceptional nature of Renaissance architecture intertwines with the strength and depth of the artistic research of the two contemporary protagonists.
The project conceived by the artists themselves is conceived as an investigation into the relationship between work and space, between stability and precariousness, between color and form. Their works merge in a continuous exchange with the environment, creating a tension between matter, light, and architecture. Günter Umberg’s vibrant monochrome works from the 1970s interact with the rooms of the villa: the artist has conceived the exhibition in different sequences so that each work is installed in a specific space, establishing a unique and unrepeatable connection with it and with those who walk through it. The pictorial surface, through the superimposition of countless layers of pigment and resin, generates an intense and pulsating chromatic material, in which brightness and vibration materialize an unprecedented tension between corporeality and immateriality.
The relationship between artwork and environment is also found in the works of Elisabeth Vary, where distinct but intimately connected elements develop a continuous dialogue with the space and the visitor. Shaped by hand and born from a physical relationship with the ductility of cardboard, her works require the viewer’s active involvement, inviting them to move around them, explore their volumes, discover their multiple perspectives, and investigate their skilful use of colour. The seemingly fragile material acquires a solid and vibrant presence, transforming itself into a three-dimensional object capable of occupying space thanks to its intrinsic strength, while color becomes the protagonist and structural element that defines form, rhythm, and intensity.
The works take on multiple ways of being in space, relating the plastic form of the surface to the materiality of color. An imaginative process that elaborates on the complexity of the latter, as a meeting point between different visual temperatures, from the whiteness of white to the ardor of red, from the iridescence of purple to the purity of blue.
For this exhibition, Günter Umberg has created a new work specifically for the villa’s outdoor spaces. The artist has long engaged in creating installations that integrate into museum exhibition contexts, offering the public a visual and physical experience closely connected to the space. Two concrete corner structures, inclined towards each other and forming a single body with its base, invite visitors to explore the space, to observe the interior without being able to access it, establishing a physical and perceptive relationship with the material. In a continuous interplay between interior and exterior, closed and open, visible and invisible, the gaze is guided, drawn closer and pushed away, towards a new awareness of the relationship between the work and its surroundings, as if it were a building parallel to Villa Pisani Bonetti, resonating with the historical and architectural identity of Palladio’s site in the present.
The relationship between the works of the two artists is particularly significant: Umberg and Vary share not only the experience of this exhibition, but also a common path of life and research, based on dialogue, support, and mutual esteem. Their poetics, apparently distant, reveal profound affinities in their sensitivity to space, matter, and color. The result is an intense, emotional, and visceral experience that engages the visitor in a direct confrontation with the work and the place that hosts it.
A bilingual catalogue dedicated to the work of Günter Umberg and Elisabeth Vary will be published on the occasion of the exhibition, featuring an essay by Francesca Pola and previously unpublished testimonials from the artists collected by Giorgia Maroni, images of the works, and updated biographical and bibliographical notes.
Villa Pisani in Bagnolo di Lonigo, designed by Andrea Palladio in 1541 upon his return from his first trip to Rome and built between 1544 and 1545, is probably the most representative work of his early career, marking the beginning of his collaboration with the Venetian Republic. Inspired by the monumentality of imperial Rome, Villa Pisani represented Venice’s power over the mainland: a residence that was both representative and habitable, it controlled the surrounding agricultural land, while its position on the river connected it to the Serenissima for the transport of people and goods. According to the original design, the villa was to have two main façades: the first facing the river, which is still intact, and the other facing the countryside, which is partially unfinished.
EXHIBITION: Günter Umberg - Elisabeth Vary
CURATED BY: Francesca Pola
OPENING: Friday 26 June 2026 6 p.m.
EXHIBITION PERIOD: 26 June - 18 October 2026
LOCATION: Villa Pisani Bonetti, Via Risaie 1, Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza)
ORGANIZATION: Associazione Culturale Villa Pisani Contemporary Art in collaboration with A arte Invernizzi, Milano
OPENING HOURS: from Monday to Friday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. 3 - 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
MONOGRAPH: bilingual, curated by Francesca Pola