Ira von Fürstenberg's Objets Uniques at Museo Correr, Venice

Over eighty objects by Ira von Fürstenberg (Rome, 1940) are on display at the Museo Correr in Venice, coinciding with the 16th International Architecture Exhibition titled Freespace. The exhibition, titled Objets Uniques, spans more than twenty years of her creative journey away from the spotlight. Von Fürstenberg, also known as Virginia Carolina Theresa Pancrazia Galdina Prinzessin zu Fürstenberg, comes from a lineage of high aristocracy and industry, as well as Italian cinema and design. The display, designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, features a vast collection of centerpieces, frames, andirons, candelabras, religious objects, and furnishings arranged on reduced flat surfaces. The objects are made from raw materials collected during her travels, including rock crystal, porphyry, malachite, coral, jade, bronze, and rare woods. The exhibition includes many previously unseen pieces that trace the stylistic and conceptual evolution of her decorative object production. The installation uses mirrors and precise lighting to enhance the fantasmagoric effect of the objects, which feature mythological and fairy-tale motifs such as golden wings, dragon scales, laurel crowns on skulls, octopus tentacles, putti faces, elephants on two legs, and pairs of geckos on blue stones. The exhibition offers moments of abstraction from reality, blending symbolism and imagination with the materiality of rock crystal and porphyry.