The acclaimed artist unveils a new series of paintings centered on the legendary Marchesa Luisa Casati and her menagerie of exotic animals in early 20th century Venice
By Art & Culture Editorial Staff
Walton Ford's latest exhibition at Gagosian's West 21st Street gallery focuses on a single historical figure: the eccentric Milanese heiress Luisa Casati. Opening March 6, Tutto presents a series of new paintings that reimagine the Marchesa's decadent life in pre-World War I Venice through the eyes of her exotic pets, particularly her famous cheetahs.
Ford, known for his meticulous explorations of how humans and animals intersect in art and history, turns his attention to one of the Belle Époque's most fascinating characters. Casati, who famously declared her desire to become "a living work of art," was obsessed with immortalizing her image through commissioned portraits by leading artists including Giovanni Boldini, Romaine Brooks, Adolf de Meyer, Augustus John, Man Ray, and Kees van Dongen.
Casati was also a significant patron of Futurist projects. The Marchesa transformed the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on Venice's Grand Canal into a theatrical setting for her elaborate soirées, complete with a remarkable menagerie of white peacocks, albino blackbirds, monkeys, and most notably, cheetahs.
"I wanted to paint pictures about the world's fastest animals living a fast life with a wild woman in Venice," explains Ford. The resulting works combine historical detail with imaginative speculation, creating scenes that capture both the glamour and excess of Casati's world. In La levata del sole (2025), Ford depicts the Marchesa in nothing but a fur coat, walking her jewel-collared cheetahs through Piazza San Marco at dawn. La Marchesa (2024) presents these magnificent cats scavenging among the debris of a masquerade ball, while their owner stands partially nude in an 18th-century tricorn hat.
The exhibition's titular painting, Tutto fu ambito e tutto fu tentato (2025), draws its name from a poem by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Casati's longtime lover and a key figure in early 20th-century Italian literature. The work shows one of the cheetahs observing its sleeping mistress beside an opium pipe, while Forse che sì forse che no (2024) places a snarling cheetah in a gondola against a backdrop of illuminated Venetian architecture.
Ford's new body of work explores themes of wealth, spectacle, and the complex relationship between human ambition and the natural world. The paintings also serve as a meditation on the end of an era, as both Casati and D'Annunzio would see their worlds transformed by World War I and its aftermath. Ford's work joins an impressive exhibition history that includes shows at the Brooklyn Museum, Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin, and most recently, "Birds and Beasts of the Studio" at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York (2024).
Tutto opens with a reception on Thursday, March 6, from 6-8pm, and runs through April 19, 2025, at Gagosian's 522 West 21st Street location in New York. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see how one of America's most distinctive contemporary artists reimagines a legendary figure of European decadence through the eyes of her exotic companions.
Visit gagosian.com for more information about the exhibition and gallery hours.
