May 4 | Dynamic jury in place for upcoming Venice Biennale

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With just nine days to go, the Venice Biennale has finally revealed its judging panel. The biennale looks set to impress on May 13 when it opens with prolific performance artist and radical feminist, Carolee Schneemann receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award. In other news, sadly the East German Neo-Expressionist artist, A.R. Penck has died, aged 77.

Venice Biennale appoint Prize Jury for 57th edition

An international jury for the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale has been appointed by the Biennale’s board of directors, chaired by Paolo Baratta. In a decision made with the help of artistic director Christine Macel, the jury comprises Francesca Alfano Miglietti, a Milan-based curator; Manuel J. Borja-Villel, director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; Amy Cheng, a Taipei-based curator, writer, and cofounder of TheCube Project Space; Ntone Edjabe, a journalist, DJ, and founder of the pan-African arts and politics publication Chimurenga based in Cape Town; and Mark Godfrey, the senior curator of international art at Tate Modern. Additionally, Borja-Villel has been appointed president of the jury.

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award has already been decided, with performance artist Carolee Schneemann to be awarded the prize at the 2017 opening, on May 13. The Biennale will run through November 26. Details via La Biennale

 

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1975)


 

German Neo-Expressionist A.R. Penck has died at 77

Best known for his paintings and sculptures depicting simplified symbols and figures, often silhouetted using thick black lines, the Neo-Expressionist artist A.R. Penck has died in Zürich, at the age of 77.

Reportedly the artist, born in East Germany in 1939 (before being exiled in 1961) passed away on Tuesday, May 2, after having suffered “a lengthy illness.” With a career spanning five decades, Penk explored extensively how signs, numbers and symbols could become abstraction, along with fellow Neo-Expressionists Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, and Markus Lüpertz.

Penck had his first major solo show in 1969, at Michael Werner Gallery, Cologne. Finding fame in New York by 1980, he went on to participate in the 1984 Venice Biennale, as well as in four editions of Documenta. In 2007, his work was the subject of a major retrospective at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle. His paintings are currently on view in a solo show at Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. For a full obituary, see the New York Times.

 


A.R. Penck by Heinz-Günter Mebusch | A. R. Penck, World of Eagles IV (1981) 

 

 

Dia Art Foundation to receive six Brice Marden paintings

Bequeathed by private collector and longtime trustee, Frances Bowes, six paintings by Brice Marden are to be gifted to the Dia Art Foundation. The foundation shares a long history with the artist, who served as a member of Dia’s board of trustees from 2013 to 2015.

The gift includes Rain Forest (1971), Miranda (1972), Green (Earth) (1983–84), 1 Grey (1987–88), Diagrammed Couplet #2 (1988–89) and Cold Mountain 3 (1989–91). Details via ARTNEWS

 

Brice Marden, Cold Mountain 6 (1989–91). 


 

Cheech Marin sets up Chicano art center in California

In partnership with the city of Riverside and the Riverside Art Museum, actor and avid art collector, Cheech Marin, is to open a center for Chicano art in Riverside, California. The sixty-thousand-square-foot space would provide a permanent home for his seven-hundred-work collection. Currently the building houses the main branch of the Riverside Library, which is in the process of relocating to a venue nearby. Details via the LA Times.

 

Cheech Marin © LA Times