Three masters of modern painting and three perspectives on the object. Starting from a carefully curated selection of still lifes by Picasso, Morandi and Parmiggiani, the exhibition offers a reflection on the question of the representation of reality – navigating the space between observation and reconstruction – beginning with the staging of the object within the artist’s studio. Picasso’s bricolages, assemblages and deconstructions converge into a nascent pictorial language that breathes new life into the subject of Memento Mori; Morandi’s surprising variations on the theme of bottles and containers, painted white and preserved on the shelves of his studio, are elevated to absolute and timeless symbols; finally, Parmiggiani’s works, traces of smoke equivalent to so many questions about absence and disappearance, reinterpret the Vanitas in a contemporary key.

The catalogue accompanies the exhibition, which can be visited at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Piazza San Marco, 71/C, 30124 Venice) from 5 May to 31 July 2026.

Cécile Debray director of the Musée de l’Orangerie since June 2017. She served as curator in charge of the modern collections at the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou from 2008 to 2017, head of exhibition programmes at the Grand Palais, RMN from 2005 to 2008, and curator at the Musée de la Ville de Paris from 2000 to 2005. An art historian and lecturer at the École du Louvre, she publishes essays on historical avant-garde movements and on modern and contemporary painting. She has devised a new presentation of the Musée de l’Orangerie’s collection in the renovated spaces (September 2020).