Daniel Spivakov transformed the rags of Venice’s Crea Cantieri del Contemporaneo into a painting cycle that blends memory, resilience and Renaissance references. Created between 2023 and 2024, his Stracci series fuses gesture, oil and metaphor.
It has been two years since the painter Daniel Spivakov moved from Kyiv via Berlin to Venice. On the island of Giudecca – nicknamed Isola delle Foche, Seal Island, in local jargon due to its harsh climate – he set up a studio at the Crea Cantieri del Contemporaneo. The plain brick halls, their large windows opening onto the boat yard, are located not far from Palladio’s magnificent church, the Redentore. While down by the shore the waves crash and the broad vista stretches across the Giudecca Canal and the Bacino di San Marco all the way to the Campanile and the Doge’s Palace, the shipyard lies a little hidden, facing the southern lagoon. In the yard, heavy wooden boats are propped up, a chainsaw screeches, and hammers pound. Amidst the bustle, one hears pigeons cooing, seagulls cackling, and dogs barking.
THE ARTIST’S STUDIO AT GIUDECCA, AMONG CRAFTSMEN AND SHIPYARD LIFE
Inside Spivakov’s studio the outside world is muffled. The painter stands by the window, his jeans and sweater spattered with paint; he blends in well with the artisans at Crea, with whom he maintains close ties. People know one another, lend each other a hand. And so it happens that stracci remain in Spivakov’s studio – sturdy rectangular cotton rags used by the workers for cleaning. The painter keeps them and decides to stretch them like canvas. He adapts the stretcher bars to the discarded cloths, irregular and sometimes even trapezoidal. Spivakov collects more stracci and becomes absorbed in their surface texture. Unlike his large-format works, which he prints with selected photographic elements – mostly art-historical or mythological references – he leaves the rags as they are. He works with the dirt, with the coded marks, and begins to treat the fabrics with oil paint, primarily light yellow but also shades ranging from pale pink to bright magenta.
FROM WORKSHOP RAGS TO CANVAS: A UNIQUE CREATIVE PROCESS
The result is a twelve-part cycle (including a diptych), which he first presented individually in March 2024 at his solo show Eʼ solo un trucco and then, in July of the same year, as a mosaic-like ensemble at the group exhibition Strange III. Only Spivakov’s work Jonathan Seagull’s last attempt at being free remained in the Giudecca studio until shortly before his return to Berlin in March 2025.
In the small-format Stracci series – the height varying between 30 and 60 centimeters – Spivakov probes the limits of painting as a medium. How far can the found fabrics be stretched? What forms are dictated by the wear and tear left by the craftsmen? What can the canvas endure? The Ukrainian artist, who left his hometown Kyiv in February 2022 just before the beginning of Russia’s invasion, chose a drastic means. He procured a taxidermied pigeon, dismembered it, and used it as a brush.
Dipping a wing in oil paint, he struck it against the canvas. With a crash the wing hit, the paint splattering across the cloth, over the work surface, onto the artist’s clothing. Again and again. His composition was intuitive. Spivakov’s expressive gesture of “striking” has something cathartic, liberating, reminiscent of the heroic defiance of Prometheus, of the mythological race of Titans, who rebelled against Zeus, the tyrannical father of the gods. In Goethe’s hymn it says: “Here I sit (…) caring not for you (….)!”
UNITY OF FORM AND COLOR IN THE STRACCI PAINTINGS
Formally and chromatically, Spivakov has designed his abstract Stracci series to form a unity despite their varying sizes and shapes, dominated by circular or crescent-shaped imprints of wing-beats as compositional elements. Sometimes a thick impasto texture rises from the surface in relief; sometimes a delicate, occasionally dripping outline traces the contours. When, for the Strange III exhibition, Spivakov arranged the works associatively as an ensemble, he finally painted a large white ribbon across the entire surface. It can be read as a “D” and thus as a signature, but when viewing the works individually and separately, it disappears.
REFERENCES TO VENETIAN RENAISSANCE MASTERPIECES
During his two-year stay in the lagoon city, the painter sought proximity to the masterpieces of Venetian High Renaissance painting – Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese – so his use of oil paint, perfected in Venice, can be understood as a conscious reference. Iconographic influences, however, remain speculative. The round, light-yellow paint-balls, for example, when enclosing a dark spot, function as a citation of the Christian narrative: the Holy Spirit appears as a dove descending into the scene, engulfed in a golden beam of light. But unlike the historical models, Spivakov’s wing elements constantly shift direction, developing a light, fluttering dynamism. Similarly, the few handwritten yellow notes on some works – sometimes at the bottom, sometimes to the side, sometimes at the top – remain cryptic and unintelligible to the viewer.
TITLES AS KEYS TO INTERPRETING THE STRACCI WORKS
Any attempt to describe the visible form of Spivakov’s Stracci cycle without interpretation falters, since the painter gives most of his works titles that decode them. Thus, the trapezoidal work Jonathan Seagull’s last attempt at being free shows along its right edge a long gray-brown streak, which, on closer inspection, resembles a bird with its beak pointed upward, as if in a steep climb. The escape attempt suggested by the title contrasts with the knowledge of the blows that, with great force, mark its being. An explanation is provided by Richard Bach’s allegorical fable Jonathan Livingston Seagull, in which the protagonist has the transcendent ability to mediate between worlds, the earthly and the beyond: “The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other. To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere, you must first know that you have already arrived.”
Transferred to the historical context of the Stracci cycle’s creation (during the Russian invasion) and its sociocultural environment (Venice), one can conclude that Spivakov’s use of rough and worn canvas surfaces refers to the condition of his hometown (Kyiv), with which he remains emotionally and mentally connected, though he left it (the day before the war began). Extending this narrative, Spivakov himself becomes the seagull, finding freedom in a steep ascent (on the last plane), just before a blow (a bomb) could strike him.
RESILIENCE, MEMORY AND A LASTING LEGACY IN VENICE
When you speak with the painter, he says that what surrounds him does not define his work. And yet everything around him finds its way into it. In the Stracci series, this is concretely the Crea shipyard, and, in a broader sense, Spivakov’s resilience in Venice. With the series – last shown in July 2024 as an ensemble and since dispersed into various collections – Daniel Spivakov has created a lasting physical and spiritual connection with Venice and with his artist’s residence in the lagoon city.
LINK
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