Roger de Montebello · Colours on Paper

Vert de Venise Contemporary Art is pleased to exhibit, for the first time in Venice, a selection of works on paper by Roger de Montebello. In his last show in Venice, at the Museo Correr in 2017, he exhibited oil paintings on canvas and panel, some of them large-scale. This exhibition, Colours on Paper, breaks new ground and is an important landmark in Montebello’s work. Venice and its lagoon have always been for him the perfect location to explore freely the ever-shifting relationship between colour, space and light.

“Usually, I conceive colour as being at the service of light,” he states. “Light tends to be the organizing principle: light is colour in space. At least that’s what I like to believe.” How does Montebello address this? He has engaged enthusiastically with working on a smaller scale. “I enjoy what might be termed the ‘discretion’ of works on paper,” he says. “I love their non-intrusiveness. They don’t pollute the world. There is an intimacy and immediacy in them, yet there can be as much of a world in a small drawing or watercolour as there is in a large painting.”

This exhibition offers a comprehensive selection of Montebello’s recent work on paper, ranging from exuberantly colourful iterations of Venice and the lagoon to near-monochromatic depictions, containing beautifully controlled linear elements.