二月 24, 2026

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present a solo presentation by Ida Barbarigo (1920-2018), featuring a selection of rarely-seen works from the mid-1950s, 1960s. During these two decades, the paintings illustrate the evolution in her approach to abstraction: from very formal and geometric to a much more lyrical visual language that is completely her own. Barbarigo’s chair paintings transform simple objects into haunting symbols of presence and absence, using repetition, distortion, and atmospheric space to evoke psychological tension rather than depict literal furniture.

Ida Barbarigo was born as Ida Cadorin into a well-known Venetian family of artists, architects, and sculptors. She possessed a rare ability to convey emotions, unseen energies, and the depth of the human condition. She worked obsessively and passionately on various series throughout her life. These series took many forms, including self-portraits, judges, sphinxes, flowers, demons, beaches, city views, and earthlings. One theme was dominant and recurring: the moveable, sculptural, simple chair. Omnipresent in her oeuvre, the chair became Barbarigo’s leitmotif, like a personal script, a form of handwriting. A humble object that she related to through her intense observations and brought to life through poetic abstraction. The Spanish museologist and professor Kosme de Barañano writes about her devotion to chairs : “The chair in Barbarigo is not an object of use, but a witness. It conserves the trace of the body that has just left and evokes the one that will return. [...] Her painting seeks the space between things, that interval where silence acquires density and air itself becomes presence.”