Eduard Angeli. Silentium

A silent, enigmatic, even disturbing immobility is the atmosphere conveyed by these views painted by Eduard Angeli (Vienna, 1942), and collected in this catalogue published by Marsilio Arte, interpreted by curator Philip Rylands, art historian Klaus Albrecht Schröder and critic Marco Meneguzzo.

Eduard Angeli. Silentium is published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name sponsored by the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova, which can be seen at their Magazzino del Sale space on the Zattere in Venice from 13 April to 24 November 2024. The show contains fourteen large-scale, mainly Venetian, views: day- and night-time images, buildings and landscapes (or waterscapes). All the works are notable for their absence of human figures, as, hauntingly, in The Bar (2006), The Lighthouse (2013) and The Lantern (2023).

A leading figure on the contemporary art scene, Eduard Angeli has maintained a long spiritual association with the city of Venice. Since 2001, in fact, the artist has been an assiduous frequenter of the lagoon city, often for long periods, eventually settling in a studio/residence on the Lido. It was from this vantage point that Angeli began a painting cycle that has developed over the years and in which the city is itself the protagonist of his works.

The catalogue opens with an essay by the curator, Philip Rylands, which guides the reader through Angeli's artistic practice, offering a scrupulous in-depth reflection on the influence of Venice on the Austrian painter's imagination. Klaus Albrecht Schröder devotes his text – Eduard Angeli’s Silence – to one of the artist's most scrutinised themes: his personal myth of silence and melancholy. Marco Meneguzzo, finally, in The Nostalgia of Horizons ponders the difference between nostalgia and melancholy, two moods that permeate Angeli’s work.

The catalogue closes with images of the works in the exhibition and a selection of ten further canvases, complemented by a critical/biographical apparatus section outlining the life of the artist and providing a complete chronology of his exhibitions and a list of collections hosting his works.

Angeli's enigmatic renderings give us a particular vision of Venice: shifting and mysterious, almost outside of time. For over fifty years, in fact, Angeli's artistic production has focused on themes of silence and melancholy. “With the exception of a few early works, Schröder notes, “Angeli has never deviated from portraying the immobility of the world, and for more than twenty years, he has located this theme in the myth of the dead city. These paintings convey Angeli’s inner vision of a crepuscular silence and make him a figure entirely sui generis in the contemporary art scene.”