It’s stuck in the lagoon. April 19, the kickoff of the 60e Venice Biennale, called “Foreigners Everywhere”, featured a plethora of events scattered throughout the city of the Doges. Welcoming 331 foreign artists from all disciplinary backgrounds, the event, which continues until November 24, is also an opportunity for certain Italian fashion houses to show the extent of their know-how or their involvement in the world of art.
This is the case of Tod’s, which this year is one of the financial partners of the Italian pavilion installed in the Venice Arsenal, featuring unique works by the artist Massimo Bartolini. Illuminating Italian culture and art is also the idea behind the project “The Art of Craftsmanship, a project by Venetian Masters”, presented by the brand on the evening of April 19, during an ephemeral exhibition which continued through the inaugural weekend of the Biennale, April 20-22, with the final two days open to the public.
The idea? Invite eleven artists and artisans from Venice and its region to reinterpret the famous Gommino, the emblematic shoe, born at the same time as the brand, in 1978. Made from a single piece of leather, this soft moccasin is sewn by hand and lined with a rubber sole with thirty-three rubber nubs in the center. A distinctive sign patented by the house and which made its fame and fortune.
Blown glass and gold leaf
It was under a large boathouse at the Venice Arsenal that the pieces designed by the craftsmen were exhibited. We were thus able to see a reproduction of the yellow Gommino moccasin fashioned in blown glass made by the artisan from the small neighboring island of Murano, Roberto Beltrami, or colorful screen printing posters signed by the artist Gianpaolo Fallani and representing gestures and tools specific to shoe makers (a pair of scissors, wooden shoe lasts, etc.).
Also presented were a pair of Gommino entirely covered in gold leaf, designed by craftsmen specializing in this material, Marino Menegazzo and Mario Berta Battiloro, as well as eight masks painted in warm colors (ochre, sand, brown, etc.), decorated of leather from the house’s factory and developed by Sergio Boldrin, expert in ball masks – he notably designed those for the film Eyes Wide Shut (1999) by Stanley Kubrick.
A light installation by the artist Federica Marangoni welcomed visitors – or accompanied them, it depends: a wire escaping from a reel of red neon framed the entrance door, and continued to the interior, leading to a light sculpture representing the Gommino sole.
A great art lover, Diego Della Valle, president of Tod’s, has made it his mission for several years to promote and preserve Italian heritage and its know-how. In 2011, he notably committed to allocating 25 million euros to the restoration of the Colosseum in Rome. After cleaning the two-thousand-year-old facade, renovating the hypogeums, tunnels and rooms under the arena, he will work on illuminating the monument.