Casa dei Tre Oci: photography and contemporary art in Venice

Casa dei Tre Oci is an artistic residence in neo-gothic architecture open for important photography and contemporary art events.

Located on the Giudecca island, Casa dei Tre Oci is a splendid example of early 20th century Venetian architecture and a place for cultural elaboration and comparison on contemporary ways of communication, with a particular focus on photography.

Designed by the artist Mario De Maria (Marius Pictor) and built in 1913, it overlooks the Giudecca Canal in front of Piazza San Marco and Palazzo Ducale, in an area of exceptional historical, artistic and monumental interest, near the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Church of the Redeemer and opposite Punta della Dogana.

The Casa dei Tre Oci has been so named because of its original façade with three large aligned windows located in the centre of the building; they look like three “oci”, which translates to ‘eyes’ from the venetian dialect. This peculiarity makes the building immediately recognizable to those who take a walk at the ‘Zattere’ or pass through the Giudecca Canal by boat or ferry boat.

The building was designed by the artist Mario De Maria, Bolognese painter and architect who immediately made it become his new elegant Venetian home; the particular structure of the Casa dei Tre Oci was created to remember his daughter Silvia, who had disappeared a few years before: in fact the three large windows of the façade represent the members of the De Maria family, while the two-light window above them commemorates the young deceased.

However, the history of the De Maria family has not yet been lost and it is preserved in two dedicated rooms: the original furnishings and a remarkable selection of paintings and drawings let the audience enter the cultural scene of the 80s in Venice, conveying the feeling of a place that has been a crossroads of cultural meetings and artistic events of international leverage for many years. We recommend visiting this exhibition space of not only an artistic but also cultural and historical interest.

After the death of De Maria, the House has seen guests of the likes of Renzo Piano and it also become a film set, when in 1970 the director Enrico Maria Salerno filmed there some scenes of his film ‘Anonimo Veneziano’. After a period of decline which followed a long period of deindustrialization, the Giudecca Island is currently experiencing a period of great expansion. The interest in creativity and the recovery of old industrial centres in recent years have encouraged the artistic and urban development of the island, contributing to bring a new spirit of internationality and innovation to the entire city.

Restored by Polymnia, an instrumental company of the Venice Foundation that bought it in 2000, the Casa dei Tre Oci became in 2012 an exhibition space open to the public, thanks to a project by the Venice Foundation with Civita Tre Venezie, in collaboration with Veneto Bank and Venetian Graphics.

The Artistic Director of the Casa dei Tre Oci is Denis Curti, director of the monthly publication ‘Il Fotografo’, a consultant at the Venice Foundation for the management of photographic heritage and the artistic director of the Photography Festival of Capri. In addition to the exhibitions, the Casa dei Tre Oci organizes workshops and photography courses held by photographers including Gianni Berengo Gardin and Franco Fontana. In the Casa dei Tre Oci there are the photographic funds owned by the Venice Foundation and the Italo Zannier Archive, a section of the Italo Zannier Library on photography and the historical archive of the Venetian photography association La Gondola.

After the great exhibitions of Helmut Newton, Ferdinando Scianni and René Burri, until 10 September 2017 the Casa dei Tre Oci hosted the surreal, baroque and pop universe of David LaChapelle, a 360 degree photographer and artist among the most relevant ones of the last thirty years.

The exhibition curated by Reiner Opoku and Denis Curti and organized by the Venice Foundation and Civita Tre Venezie will present over 100 images that trace the career of the American artist and, in world premiere, New World, 18 photographs taken in the last four years that mark the return to the human figure and that revolve around themes such as paradise and the representation of joy, nature and the soul.

The photos are by Riccardo Rizzetto, @riccardorizz, Marco Valmarana, @marcovalmarana, Inna Shnayder, @ inna.shnayder, and Thomas Kakareko, @thomas_k, for Venezia da Vivere.